In Comparative Diagram 8, I compare Derome's birds dj-4 and dj-4-2 that he often used in his dentelle à l'oiseau. I have often speculated upon these tools, we can invent a story, to explain the possible history of them. First Derome made a copy of Dubuisson's bird, (along with many other Dubuisson tools) it is a reversed Dubuisson pd-4, and it was a tool that Derome then used a lot and loved. Then one day, an accident happend and part of the top crown broke off, he could no longer use the tool as before unless the crown was partly obscured by another overlapping imprint, still he required the tool as his centrepiece signature in the spine compartments where there could be no overlapping, he had to have a second tool made. The reason I say this is that the first tool, had a rather off kilter crown, like wearing beret off to one side. This was the easily recognizable Derome bird, now he had to make another with the same look, same off to the side crown. Christie's Lot 168 has both of these birds just as it should have, the imprint from the spine was not easy to present in this diagram it had to be adjusted to account for the perspective of the photograph (it is a virtual dj-4-2). This is cheating a bit but look carefully at the part that the small green arrow is pointing to. You will see that this part of the imprint shows the most obvious difference between dj-4 and dj-4-2, the same difference can be seen in the Lot 168 imprints.
In conclusion then, this Lot 168 binding would have to be the most recognizable Derome le jeune binding that any expert is ever likely to see, epic fail on the part of the experts not to attribute this binding to Derome with all the respective fanfare and additional price. However good fortune for us, as here we are able to show and point out an actual honest to goodness Derome. In the Christie's description of Lot 168 they state that the spine is decorated with the same fer à l'oiseau as the one in the dentelle, this is incorrect as is explained above. I will have to admit that I do not know when this binding was made, but I think that the c9c1 and C11d6 bindings are probably contemporaneous with Lot 168. If I understand the database notes for C11d6 "with binder's ticket Ract Madoux (Essai, 1989) 1761-70, D no 3" this is a reference to the work of Ract Madoux essai de classement chronologique des etiquettes de derome le jeune in bulletin du bibliophile no 2 paris, 1989, which I don't have at the moment but assume that the Derome ticket found in C11d6 was a type D no 3 that has been chronologically fixed as being used by Derome somewhere between the dates 1761 and 1770, i.e. one of Deromes first tickets, In that case, it is not impossible that this binding could have been made soon after the publication date, 1766. This implies however that after only 5 years in the business Derome le jeune, already had clients of the highest order. I would have thought it more likely to be in the later part of his career. More research is needed to answer this question.
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