| On the previous page we touched on the issue of whether or not our 1742 Missal Romanum was actually bound and decorated by Dubuisson rather than Delorme as I first postulated. Now we are going to look at the Scrolling Leaf Bordures SLB, or rather the few that I have been able to find. In Comparative Diagram 1, we see a series of SLBUs Scrolling Leaf Border units extracted from our Missale, we can see that because of the obvious join gaps of the individual units what the actual full unit must look like. This is shown in Comparative Diagram 2, here I was able to make high resolution scans and we see clearly most of the details. |
| In Comparative Diagram 3 we compare part of the Missale SLB with a 1740 (1739 FETES) example that is somewhat larger. We have looked at this 1740 binding on page one of these new pages, we are reasonably certain that this binding must have been made around 1740 and that it came from the Dubuisson workshops (due to the Dubuisson outer roulette). Interestingly these 2 SLB examples show some differences although being nearly identical in design. The first noticeable design difference is the distance between the units, the 1740 example was designed to keep a tighter fit with less space between the units and the overlap or joins are less obvious than those of the Missale. The SLB units may have been made in relationship to the size of the binding. This could indicate that there may not be a great difference in the period that these tools were put into use, the difference in size perhaps only relative to the size of the binding. |
| In Comparative Diagram 4 we see a strip of 1740 SLB units, these can be identified simply by the closeness or tightness of the units. |
| In Comparative Diagram 5 we see an amazing discovery, here are 2 rare plaque decorated Collombat Semaine Saint bindings with SLB borders instead of the usual Dubuisson roulettes, the fit is less than perfect on the sides, |
| In Comparative Diagram 7, we discover that these borders are not made of individual units but rather are made with small plaques that are 6 units long, the design of the units is more spaced than the 1740 borders. We might guess that all of these scrolling leaf borders derive from the Dubuisson workshops, and may be early comparatively, i.e. part of Pierre-Paul Dubuisson's earliest work or even the work of Rene Dubuisson. As we have seen Delorme employing the Dubuisson tools for decades in the post Pierre-Paul Dubuisson period, we cannot rule out the possibility that Delorme could have decorated our 1742 Missale Romanum binding with the old Dubuisson tools. |
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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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