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I found another Boyet (shown above) with an identical dentelle as found on my eBay binding shown on the previous page, this one is found in a auction catalogue presented on the website of EXPERT Dominique COURVOISIER Alexandre MAILLARD. What is so obvious to me is that the world has no idea of what bookbindings are worth. Here we have a one of a kind item made by the greatest bookbinder of the 18th century. Hands down Boyet beats them all for a number of reasons, he was the best! His bindings were and still are the best that you can ever buy. What are they worth, what is a Rembrandt worth? Each binding is a unique masterpiece, 300 years old and looks like new, why? Because they were made the right with the best possible materials and best possible craftmanship, something like buying a Rolls Royce only much better, something you can hold in your hands without worrying, you can open it and smell it, feel it and marvel in its perfection. WHAT IS THAT WORTH? I will tell you it's far more than a few thousand euros. Hundreds of years ago people were paying, proportionly, way more money for treasures like this because they new the real value of things. Now the world is paying millions for junk, for signatures and photographs, it makes you want to wake them up and say you dumb .... well lets not get onto a rant, the cheaper they are the more likely I can afford one or two. I spent the weekend going though all the old catalogues you can find on the internet. Its obvious that up till a few years ago, no one knew how to recognize a Boyet, sure it looked great but who made it, they didnt have a clue and many still don't. Boyet mastered a lot of different decorative styles, old and new, so good were his retrospective bindings that even the greatest expert Thoinan did not realize it was the work Boyet and not Ruette he was looking at. Padeloup was slipshod compared to Boyet's precision, so much so that I doubt that Padeloup actually made some of the precision bindings now attributed to him, if Padeloup lived in the days of Mace Ruete et al, he would have been laughed out of business with his sloppy strapwork, home made arms, and other excentricities. Dubuisson is the only binder to have surpassed Boyet in creative inventiveness, but did he actually bind the books, and were the bindings as good as Boyet produced, probably not. I have detailed a number of pages that will make identifying a Boyet an easy task if you study them closely. Boyet was the Kings binder for many years and very successful so naturally many tried to imitate his tools and his designs. Today, that can make identifying a Boyet tricky, the imprints of Boyets tools are found on Almanachs and everything destined for Louis XIV. I doubt that today we can appreciate the amount of power Louis XIV was weilding. If you tried to rank men in terms of power and influence on the world over the last 1000 years Louis would be near the top and everything he touched now has a kind of magical extra value that ought to shoot the price of Boyet's Royal bindings through the roof, but NO!!! you can still find them on eBay for peanuts, breaths out a sigh of exasperation.
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