| On the previous page we were looking at a Derome le jeune found in the British Library and confirmed that it is certainly the work of Derome. When you are looking for a Derome binding probably you will only have a spine to guide you, certainly dentelle bindings are harder to find. in fact a thorough search through all the digitized bindings available online at the Bibliotheque Nationale, the most prestigious library in France, will not produce a single dentelle that was actually made by Derome. This is correct they do not show you a single authentic Derome dentelle binding, we did find a spine so thats a good start. One of the most important parts of the spine decoration are the palettes used at the top and bottom of the spine. Derome often used one particular palette which you can see in the enlarged spine detail shown at the top of the page. There are four important details in this palette example that is wider than most and shows more of it than is seen usually. First I would like to point out the central flower with 7 petals, to the left of it is another with 7 petals, while on the right we we see a side view of the flower and only 5 petals and a large hole in the stem, and to the right of that a seed pod. Below in Comparative Diagram 1, I show the BnF example that we studied on a previous page along with the the C22f1-3 example, perhaps the scale of the C22f1-3 is a bit smaller due to being from a resized photograph and not a scan. Also note that the BnF example had to be rotated so as to appear in the same sense. It maybe that this palette, is in fact a roulette that is being used here as a palette. |
| Derome was not original, he did not invent the dentelle binding nor fer à l'oiseau, he copied Dubuisson from top to bottom, we will not be surprised to see a similer palette/roulette in Dubuisson's work. Fortunately we can see an enlarged one with Gallica in the binding that appears in the BnF Dubuisson examples, RES-V-2521, a biding that was decorated with a large Dubuisson plaque, as well as a roulette that is of a similar design, used by Dubuisson several years before Derome started his career. Dubuisson must have used this roulette on hundreds of bindings where the plaques were not large enough to cover the whole binding, and it would have be a well known Dubuisson trade mark. |
| We have also seen another palette from Derome's collection that closely resembles this model but is larger and the flowers have 8 petals. It is found on the binding C11d6 which we have examined closely on another page. (see this page). Unfortunately I do not have a complete example of this palette and have made an approximate reconstruction from two different samples, two different ways so that you can see how the original would look, however this is found on a very large book and perhaps was seldom used. Thus we have 2 models of this particular palette (1a and 1b). |
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On the next page we will look at other things to look for in a Derome binding.
click here to see the next page (under construction). click here to return to the INDEX of new pages. see below links to previous work |
| 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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