| If you have read my recent pages on the Mosaic bindings of Louis Douceur (click here to see them) you will be able to image my surprise and joy to see this binding on the back cover of a new (2019) Herbibert Tenschert catalogue that I received in the mail today. We had been researching Louis-Marie Michon's atelier à la tulipe and the evidence was pointing to Louis Douceur as being the author of these mosaic masterpieces that carried the armes of FRANÇOISE-MARIE DE BOURBON (1677-1749), duchese d'Orléans, veuve du Régent (click here to see more about her) |
| As soon as I saw this palette at the base of the spine, I knew that the Bookbinding Gods and the ghost of Louis Douceur had delivered unto me, the ultimate proof of Douceur's authorship of the à la tulipe bindings. This very palette that was one of Douceur's favorites, this was his signature, and his way of proclaiming himself as the creator of this masterpiece. |
| In Comparative Diagram 1, we see high resolution scans compared with the catalogue cover (catalogue item number 70). I have in my collection two proven Douceur bindings with this palette and scanned them at 1200 dpi. In Comparative Diagram 1, the green lines are a way of checking the height of this palette in all examples, actually I was testing the size of the cover reproduction which turns out to be full scale 100% size, further to this I wanted to confirm that the samples were all the same. This very unsual palette has a number of surprising features, first it is short in length and often has to be stamped more that once to cover the width of the spine, This requires considerable skill to place the imprints so that they do not over lap and are well aligned. This need of technical skill is evident here, and in most examples there is usually some overlap, and it is this that makes this palette so easy to identify. The join of the imprints has been almost perfectly executed in the lowest scan example that is from the spine of a 1749 Henault (click here to see this) and somewhat less perfect in the No. 70 example. |
| The next incredible gift that Douceur offers us is his fer à la tulipe, shown in Comparative Diagram 2, you will notice that the stems of these imprints are the same while there is some variation on the treatment of the bulb. I noticed this same variation in one of the bindings that I assembled for the Mosaic pages. (see example F in the diagram below) |
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click here to return to the HOME page. click here to see an INDEX of the 2017 pages. 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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