| This 1739 Office de la Quinzaine de Pasque was on eBay for months, no one wanted it, mainly I suppose due to the fact that the printer's mark has been cut out of the title page, and the seller's photo of this (shown below) is the first thing that meets the eye when you see the listing. My intitial interest was two fold when I decided to investigate this item. We have been looking previously at a series of mosaic bindings made by Louis Douceur for Francoise-Marie de Bourbon, these bindings were all covering this very same 1739 publication. |
| First I thought it would be a good to buy this inexpensive example just to have the exact measurements, of the binding. Then on closer inspection of the dentelle I thought that I recognized in the seller's photos Louis Douceur's favorite framing roulette, I would have to buy it to be sure, and buy it I did, for 60 euros who could resist? |
| When you find that you have proof that the binding you are holding was decorated by Louis Douceur, it is a satisfying moment, that inspires you to go further. The palette at the base of this 1739 Douceur dentelle binding is not that common yet I knew I had seen it before, and just recently, it is also found on the Tenschert 72 mosaic that we have reviewed on another page (click here to see it). |
| Now we are doubly sure that this is a Douceur and this starts to be exciting because the dentelle on this binding is one that we have seen before and never knew the importance of it. Giles Barber has catalogued an identical dentelle |
| In Comparative Diagram 4, we see that these dentelles are indeed the same, Barber notes this dentelle as being found on W.Cat. 191 as a doublure decoration, he does not mention Louis Douceur, however we can be sure that W.Cat. 191. is also another Douceur binding. |
| Now we come to the mysterious part, the decoration of the spine panels, shown in Comparative Diagram 5. I have not recorded any of these imprints previously. One would think that these tools which are probably or possibly from 1739 and some of the earliest Douceur tools known to me, should have been used by Douceur in the following years... what happened to these tools or are they the tools from another workshop? |
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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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