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I spotted this small book on eBay in April 2021. At the time I knew nothing about this 1695 Publication by Jacques Pradon, however now, after researching this a bit, I found it in the WorldCat where I didcovered some interesting information...
8 editions published between 1695 and 1732, however these can be divided up into only two groups a 1695 and a 1732 that are a post mortem printing. The one that I now have is probably this edition shown as the third.
as it has the main elements listed in this description but is missing the Frontispice Notes: Titre impr. en rouge et noir. Signatures: *12 (*12 bl.) A-V12 Les f. prélim. renferment deux épîtres à Madame la dauphine, l'une en vers, une préface et un catalogue de libraire. Frontispice gravé en taille-douce (non sign.). Description: [22], 479 p., I : ill. ; 14 cm. (12mo) Contents: Pirame, et Thisbé : tragédie ; Tamerlan, ou, La mort de Bajazet : tragédie ; Phèdre et Hippolyte : tragédie ; La troade : tragédie ; Statira : tragédie ; Regulus : tragédie I have reproduced here the missing Frontispice that you can find at archive.org However my real interest in acquiring this book was for the binding that looked certainly to be a Boyet with some elements that matched a Boyet binding presented by Isabelle de Conihout et Pascal Ract-Madoux in their 2002 publication Reliures françaises du XVIIe siècle : Chefs-d'oeuvre du musée Condé |
| In this publication the authors have included a diagram entitled Fers du doreur de Boyet, in 2006 I created the diagram shown as Comparative Diagram 1. where I assembled examples from Boyet bindings that matched their illustrations. |
| In Comparative Diagram 2, I reproduce their example 43. Doublures "plein or" (groupe 8, 1690-1710 environ) compared with my 1695 example that is only about the size of of your average cell phone although considerably thicker, therefore you realize the 2 volumes shown beside it are very small indeed. |
| " In Comparative Diagram 3, we see an enlargement of the palettes and lower spine panel, here you can see that these examples have both been decorated in a very similar way with the same tools. |
| In Comparative Diagram 4 we a further enlargement of the 1695 palette (Boyet palette V) Here then is my real reason for snapping up this eBay item, to be able to see the details of this palette enlarged to 2400dpi. Thus producing a definitive example of this imprint whereby future researchers can verify their examples with a high level of confidence. |
| Comparative Diagram 5 is an overlay of a high resolution photo (transparency reduced to 50%, color inverted and contrasted) placed over a 2400dpi scan. A scan from a flat bed scanner has no depth of field and will not give you a clear image of a curved surface however it is a scaled image that gives you exact dimensions. The high resolution photo on the other hand is of an unknown scale. In this exercise you are reducing or enlarging your photo incrementally to become a perfect fit over the scan. When you have correctly adjusted the size of your photo, the result is an accurate 2400dpi size. thus in Comparative Diagram 5 we see that the photo overlay has been resized correctly, however my reasons for showing this beyond explaining how one might achieve perfectly scaled photos, is that an obscure detail becomes more evident in the reversed overlay, a sort of hatching at the bottom of one of the posts of the overlapping fence, identified with a green arrow. |
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| Even experts are sometimes wrong, before you spend thousands on a book, please do your own research! Just because I say a certain binding can be attributed to le Maitre isn't any kind of guarantee, don't take my word for it, go a step further and get your own proof. In these pages I have provided you with a way of doing just that. |
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