| I have come across a number of bindings that look quite similar to the one shown above. Although these bindings are the work of Dubuisson they are almost always attributed to Derome. I have tried on a number of occasions to point this out, and here I will once again prove my case. I have reproduced the auction information below, for the binding shown above, it is Item number 1 from a PIERRE BERGE 2004 catalogue entitled MANUSCRITS ET TRES BEAUX LIVRES ANCIENS. |
| There are a number of errors in this description, the one that annoys me the most however is the "le fer a l'oiseau attribue a Derome". They are referring here to a tool that is everywhere referred to as Derome's "bird" however the obvious truth is that this tool is a reverse copy of Dubuisson's "bird" who was using it over a decade before Derome even became a bookbinder.In the comparative Diagram below I show an imprint taken from the binding shown at the top of this page item #1 (a) along with scanned examples of Dubuisson "birds" (b and c) as well as the Derome reversed copy (x). |
| It boggles the mind to think that in all this time, more than a few hundred years no one has seemed to sort out the differences between the gold tooling of Dubuisson and the later work of Derome. Worse still is the fact that renowned "experts" have totally confused the issue by attributing the tool to Derome. |
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We really do not need to go any further, than identifying the Dubuisson bird pd-4, to then be able to attribute this binding and the many like it to Dubuisson. In Comparative Diagram 2, I show an imprint taken from the binding shown at the top of this page item #1 (a) along with examples of Dubuisson pd-12 imprints (b and c) as well as the Derome copy of Dubuisson's tool (x). In Comparative Diagram 3, I show 4 examples of this kind of decoration by Dubuisson, the last example shown in the lower right, #70 Tasse will be explored on the next page. |
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