| On the previous page we reproduced some of Leon Gruel's text and diagrams from his 1905 Volume 2 of Manuel historique et bibliographique de l'amateur de reliures. Immediately after speaking of Pierre Delorme, Gruel goes on to outline the work of Jacques-Antoine Derome, below I have reproduced his text, while above I have reproduced Gruel's plate of a binding that he attributed to J. A. Derome. Here is another huge mistake by a famous expert, a mistake that probably influenced Louis-Marie Michon. The binding shown above was most certainly decorated by Dubuisson, all the imprints are from Dubuisson's tools, and yet Derome has pasted his ticket inside, the only explaination possible is that Derome hired Dubuisson to do this work. As already suggested by Thoinan and Marius Michel who suspected that some other doreur was working for J. A. Derome. How could Gruel make this mistake? It all becomes immediately obvious by his first statements. Writing in 1905, 18 years after his first volume, he says that right up until now he has not been able to find a binding of importance that might have been made by Jacques-Antoine Derome. |
| In Comparative Diagram 1 - we see a Dubuisson binding which I have detailed on another page (see this page) compared with Gruel's example there is no doubt that these bindings are the work of the same binder. |
| Even though Gruel's reproduction of this binding isn't great (at least not online see it here) we can see that these imprints derive from Dubuisson's tools most of which I have catalogued previously. |
| Now after writing this page a few weeks ago I found at last a binding that I remember putting in its own folder as being possibly a real Jacques-Antoine Derome binding, I found it several years ago in a 1965 Sotheby's catalogue and by great good fortune the spine of this binding has the very model of the jd-16 imprint that Gruel had illustrated. Previously I was thinking that perhaps Derome le Jeune could have made this signed spine as he often used this model fleuron for his central motif in spine panels. now we can perhaps prove that this tool actually was owned by the elder Derome and passed down to his son. |
| Here is something fantastic, this may actually be, and in fact, in all probability is, a real and very rare Jacques-Antoine Derome binding that he has decorated himself. After all this time I was thinking he never had any tools even to make one (according to Thoinan). Here is a binding to study carefully, first of all there are no signs of any tridents which was Michon's supposed link to all the Derome bindings, second we see here tools that resemble those of Dubuisson but are different, which means we can now easily separate the two camps, while at the same time we can see a few other Derome le jeune imprints i. e. tools that were passed on to him. Why would I suddenly accept this as a binding by Jacques and not his son? Firstly it seems likely, by all that I can find on the internet that this binding was made somewhere between 1746 and 1751, that is, well before Derome le jeune was even a recognized binder. The next thing is the strange almost foreign like appearance of this binding, unusual tools and very few of the typical tools of Derome le jeune with the exception of the spine compartments. |
| The first thing I want to show is this Dubuisson imprint shown in Comparative Diagram 5, this derives from a 1751 Almanach Royal, we see that these two imprints are of a very similar size and shape, I don't know who was copying who here or why, but the good thing is that these imprints are different enough for us to be able to separate them. |
| Now look at these imprints in Comparative Diagram 6, the Dubuisson example is rare, shown here from a 1751 Almanach Royal, I cannot remember seeing it elsewhere and I have not catalogued it before, proof it was not an important item in his tool kit, yet Derome the Elder has a very similar looking tool, the size and shape are really close with only slight differences in arc and thickness, the fact that Derome le jeune has something much less impressive would seem to indicate that indeed this is not the work of Derome le jeune. |
| However we do see imprints in this 377 Heures that are probably the same tools Derome le jeune was using 10 years later, these ring chains shown in Comparative Diagram 7 probably derive from the same tools. In conclusion then this binding by J A Derome is an invaluable source of information that will serve to separate all these bindings that have been mixed and attributed willy nilly by Michon. In the Sotheby's auction information for this binding they state that Michon was aware of this binding and listed it in his infamous work Les reliures mosaïquées du XVIIIe siècle, why then did he ignore the obvious importance of this binding? Probably because it did not fit his preconceived ideas. I cannot say that I am immune to this sort of speculation myself however when you get down to measuring and testing your theories you cannot carry misconceptions very long without running into contradictions, if you ignore contradictions, they may haunt you for a long time. |
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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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