| The binding shown above covers a 1524 Book of Hours presently held by the Library of Congress, and can be viewed on line (click here to see it). I stumbled on this by searching Google for "HEURES nouvelles a l'usage des Laics... Paris, Simon, 1748." Google is getting more intuitive by the minute, however there is no mention whatsoever of Derome in the Library of Congress information about this article. It was a very lucky find and fits right in with our research for the early Derome dentelle bindings. Fortunately you can download a high resolution images of this binding from the Library of Congress page, the first thing to notice is the Jacques-Antoine palette at the bottom of the spine, then the 6 ring formation in the spine compartments. |
| In Comparative Diagram 1, we see at the far right the Jacques-Antoine Derome example, right next to it is the 1524 Heures, with six rings and the jad-p-1 palette, then the 1754 Journal, six rings and the jad-16 central fleuron as per the J A Derome example , the Maggs 362, six rings and palette, finally the British Library Database of Bookbindings C6a2, with 6 rings and the Derome palette. The six ring formation is certainly a sign of an early dentelle along with the jad-p-1 palette. Below I show a larger detail of the Jacques-Antoine Derome binding where you can see the jad-46a and jad-46b pair in the corner, these tools were used to decorate the spine compartment corners of the Heures binding. |
| In Comparative Diagram 2 we can see the great similarity between the Ricci 38 binding and this Heures binding. The Ricci 38 contains a Ract-Madoux group A Derome etiquette, this is the earliest known Derome le jeune ticket, and could date to as early as 1761. What we notice here is the use of rings, for example the horizontal line of 4 rings just under the bird, this is identical in the two bindings. The use of these rings as a decorative element in this kind of floral arrangement does not last very long. The 1752 Quesnel shown below has many of these same early characteristics, six rings in the compartments, Derome palette, 4 horizontal rings in the decorative detail. jad-16 signature fleuron, the jad-46 pair on the tomb lable. Who would be surprised if it was J A Derome himself who decorated this binding as early as 1752? There is something that seems a bit odd in the history of Derome le Jeune, it is said that he only received his papers as binder in 1761, yet many of these early dentelle bindings, are found on rare manuscripts and incunabulum which were as expensive in those days as the are now if not more so. If you just paid out 100 thousand beans for a one of a kind manuscript, would you turn it over to a start up beginner for rebinding? |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, I show similar details from early bindings however without the rings, we can see the here the introduction of dj-29 this may be a sign of a change, however in Comparative Diagram 4, shown below we can see that the roulette used, is the same with either marbled endpapers or silk, the presence or absence of these could also help to pinpoint the chronology of these bindings. |
| The colour of the marbled endpapers in Comparative Diagram 5 should be ignored to a certain extent as cameras and scanners tend to do what they like when it comes to recording color. I could with photoshop make the two examples look the same however they may not be, what is certain is the the method of manufacturing these two paper examples must have been nearly identical (and probably the colors too). Also note that this is a single piece of paper folded in the middle, thus the patterns are continuous on either side of the page. If we only consider the marbled paper and the inner roulette these two binding are quite identical. Below is an example of a page found in this Book of hours with a dentelle binding by Derome, here is probably an example of what gave Derome le jeune his bad reputation of overly trimming valuable books (sacred treasures). |
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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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