I have decided to extract all the various imprints found on this binding, they are classified with their designations in light blue and I have placed beside them in the diagram below examples that I have already classified or similar close examples and given them an additional number, for example in the upper corner you will notice pd-25 this imprint shares a lot in common with an imprint found on this 1747 binding so I have listed that as pd-25-2. In the past I have not classified palettes but now as we are going to need to examine everything very closely I have given them simple names that will be easy to remember. The fleuron pd-71 I have not encountered before and have given it the number following the last in my old catalogue which is badly in need of an upgrade, I will use the Almanachs as a source of imprints that I have not yet added and try to show them in a chronological sequence as well. As shown on the previous page these bindings with this necklace and star palette dentelle appear to be some of Dubuisson's earliest work, as we progress through the Almanachs and especially the Mosaic examples we will be able to show the progression of Dubuisson's work and identify imprints that will then serve to end the doubt as concerns the attribution of these bindings.
There resides within the online collection of the Real Biblioteca PATRIMONIO NACIONAL in Madrid, several mosaic Almanach Royal bindings, only one has been attributed to Dubuisson and that is due only to the fact that his ticket is found inside, the rest remain without attribution however we will show conclusively and irrefutably through the use of comparative imprint analysis, that the decorative tools used to produce these imprints derive from the Dubuisson workshops, that is to say not from the workshops of Jacques-Antoine Derome nor those of his son Derome le jeune, nor is there any reason to believe that Padeloup le Jeune, had a hand in this work. His ticket may be inside the binding shown here however there is not a single obvious imprint from the tools of Padeloup to be seen on this binding. Further to this, a close study of the work of Padeloup and particularly his tools, shows that he used the same favourite tools over and over for decades in every binding you can always see them somewhere, never do you see any of Dubuissons tools mixed with Padeloup tools... in all the bindings that have been attributed to Padeloup but were in fact decorated by Dubuisson I have not found an intermixture of tools.
We cannot rule out the possibility that Padeloup hired Dubuission to decorate these bindings and that he may have even instructed Dubuisson on the way it was to be decorated, particularly the mosaics however this is entirely speculative and something we may never know. What we do know is that the tools used to accomplish the decorations are those of Dubuisson. These tools started to appear in 1746 and were not ever used by Padeloup any time before, they were invented by the Dubuisson's and were used continuously by the Dubuisson's as we will show in our progressive examination of the Almanachs and other mosaics.
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