| The bindings shown above are found in the 1996 Librairie SOURGET - CATALOGUE N° XIII MANUSCRITS et LIVRES Précieux, lot No. 186. I have included here the lot description. I will not attempt to translate this however they state that these bindings were made by Jacques-Antoine Derome in 1750. This is a great shock, because bindings decorated with tinfoil did not appear until some years later and were then made for a number of decades, Certain stylistic elements remind one of Dubuisson's Almanach Royals however these Anti-Lucrece bindings were probably made post Dubuisson, We know that Marie Leczinska died on the 24th of June, 1768, therefore these bindings could have been made for her any time before that. Pierre-Paul Dubuisson died in 1762 and may have not been making bindings in that year or even 1761, we do not know, however I am going to present here some evidence that indicates that these bindings, which certainly came from the Dubuisson workshops, were produced possibly around 1763 to 1767. We know that Pierre Delorme succeeed Dubuisson from Delorme's own posters published by Gruel (see this page). Thus we can attribute these bindings to Delorme, and prove this hypothesis by a close scrutiny of the tools and methods found on this binding. Fist, if you have been following these Dubuisson mosaic pages you will notice that the spine decoration of these bindings have not been matched by any similar Dubuisson spine decoration. We have seen nothing similar to the gold tooling in these spines from Dubuisson, in any of the Royal Almanachs. There are however a good number of authentic Dubuisson tools found on the boards, at the same time we see tools that have never appeared in any previous binding by Dubuisson. I suggest that these are Delorm tools, and these bindings are post Dubuisson, made in the Dubuisson workshops with a mixture of Dubuisson and Delorm tools. Before we go too far in demonstrating these facts I want to present another Sourget catalogue binding, one which decorated the back cover of their 2008 catalogue No. XXXVII. I show it below with its description... |
| What we learn from this description is that this binding could have been made anytime after 1760. We can see immediately Dubuisson imprints, so we know that this binding comes from the Dubuisson workshops, however there are tools here that I have never seen in other Dubuisson bindings, this makes me suspect that it is a post Pierre-Paul Dubuisson binding, perhaps made by Delorme. One of the first things that I noticed when I was looking for Dubuisson imprints on this binding is the large pd-60 encadrement. Dubuisson may have been the first binder to have this tool, however Derome le jeune also acquired a very similar one too as did Jubert and Gosselin, they all used this kind of tool some 10 to 20 years after Dubuisson. These tools always followed the same orientation, the orientation that Dubuisson used from the very beginning. However here on this binding we see Dubuisson's pd-60 tool being rotated 180 degrees, it is a though it has been placed upside down. When I see this, I suspect this is not Dubuisson, and Dubuisson was not around when this mistake was made. Its his tool but not his way of using it and I bet he wouldn't be happy knowing that Madame Pompadour might discover this strange orientation. |
| It might be that the palette shown in Comparative Diagram 2, is actually a roulette, it is very distinctive and difficult to miss, and a sure sign of the binding coming from the Dubuisson workshop. |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, we see identical pd-21 imprints 21a and 21b, although these imprints are unmistakeably from Dubuisson's tools, the other imprints I have not seen, or catalogued with the exception of possibly pd-29-1, these are probably post Dubuisson tools, and amoungst them we see an imprint pointed out with green arrows, this imprint is found on the Anti-Lucrece Tom 1 binding shown at the top of this page. |
| The imprints shown in Comparative Diagram 4 are rather mysterious and linked to another pair of tools that are equally as mysterious. These tools do not appear in the Dubuisson inventory until 1757 or 1758, they are more or less identical with the pair of imprints pd-72 that were often used in these mosaic bindings, similarly the pd-21 pair seemed to be replaced with a nearly identical set around the same period. Here however we see a return to the original favorite pd-21 in the Tasse binding and the pd-21-2 in the Anti Lucrece (see this page for details on pd-21). These details seem at the very least to confirm that these Anti Lucrece bindings are not as old (1750) as suggested by the Sourget experts. Also we see in these bindings imprints from tools that appear to be the same ones that Delorme used on a 1776 Almanach Royal, that he signed, tools that also appear in the Etat bindings. |
| While the scales of the various imprints shown in Comparative Diagram 5, may be slightly different for each, there seems to be small ring like imprints accompanying most, this suggests that they are all the work of Delorme, however, I am not 100% certain that these imprints are all the same pair. However these tools are probably late as I never catalogued any of this specidic type in the first several years of working on Dubuisson bindings. |
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click here to return to the Dubuisson mosaic INDEX. click here to see more Pierre-Paul Dubuisson pages. click here to see the INDEX of the 2017 pages. click here to return to the HOME page. 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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