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Here is something to watch, a
FABLES CHOISIES, MISES EN VERS by Jean de La Fontaine, 1759 in a signed Derome le jeune binding, up for auction at Sotheby's. This will probably sell for over 100 thousand dollars (click here to see it). Some of this high price will be due to this Derome binding. The first thing I noticed is that Derome's etiquette inside resembles the earliest tickets in the Ract-Madoux classification i.e. from 1761 and onwards. However this etiquette is not exactly the same, as you can see in Comparative Diagram 1 below. The caligraphy of dessus is different. I have placed it in this diagram at an aproximate scale in relation to the Ract-Madoux examples. This is a bit disturbing that the ticket is not exactly the same as the earliest tickets and indeed the decoration of the spines would indicate a older etiquette is in order. We can see a very similar looking spine in the C22f1-3 specimen found in British Library Database of Bookbinding (click here to see it). The etiquette in this binding is possibly a G 3 and could be as late as 1780 although that too seems a bit unlikely... what we can say for certain is that these two bindings share the same inner roulette, (see Comparative Diagram 2).
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