Shelfmark: Davis458
Held by: British Library
Country: France
Period: 17c
Cover Material: Goatskin (includes morocco, turkey etc)
Colour: Olive
Decorative Technique: Tooled in gold
Style/Type: Armorial, Fanfare, Pointille
Edges: -
Bookbinder: Ruette, Antoine
Ownership Mark: Louis XIV, King of France (1638-1715)
Author: -
Title: -
Place of Publication: Paris
Date of Publication: 1644
Notes: Binding reproduced by M. Foot, Les reliures françaises, fig. 3. For other French 17c bindings see Isabelle de Conihout & Pascal Ract-Madoux, Relieures Francaises du 17c, Paris 2002. Macchi states; first century half century, Paris (?), with Louis XIV coat-of-arms. Postfanfare decoration. Attributed to Antoine Ruette. This kind was adopted by ateliers like those of Macé and Antoine Ruette, Maître Doreur, Florimond Badier, Des Caumartin. Binding reproduced by M. Foot, Les reliures françaises, fig. 3.
"Antoine Ruette, the son of Mace Ruette, by his wife Marie Saminiati, was born 5th February, 1609, and received the freedom of the Guild of St. Jean in the quality of a stationer, on the 9th July, 1637. Upon the death of his father, he succeeded to the Office of Binder in Ordinary to Louis XIV."
According to the work of Isabelle de Conihout & Pascal Ract-Madoux, Relieures Francaises du 17c, Paris 2002. Mace Ruette died on the 15th of October 1638; Raphaël Esmerian mistakenly assumed his death to have been much later, around the year 1644.
Thus we are assured that this binding is correctly attributed to Antoin Ruette. I have isolated the tool imprints in the diagram below.
Davis458 binding from the BLDB.
From his extensive research, Raphaël Esmerian produced an amazing catalogue of imprints from this period: Douze Tableaux Synoptiques sur La Reliure au XVII eme Siècle, published in 1972. Evidently, Esmerian did not know of this British Library example. His table VI - ANTOINE RUETTE 1640-1669 does not include all the tools used on this binding; however, some of the tools are listed....
for example, tool #7 appears to match this imprint
here we find tool #13 is similar, but not identical, to this imprint which has been further embellished with gold dots and antennas.
In the second part of Esmerian's table...
we find a possible match with tool #21
we find, however, a better #21 match with Davis463
compare also these imprints, Davis463 and Davis468....
This brings me then to a comparative study of the key binding, Davis463. It can be shown that this binding contains a number of tools which are figured in Esmerian's Table VI - ANTOINE RUETTE 1640-1669
as well as tool imprints identical to those of Davis465 and my 1659 binding...
In this comparative corner detail we see tools 8 and 15-2 as well as a number of identical rolls and fillets that have been used to create a border arrangement similar to that of the 1659 binding. We now know that Antoine Ruette was the Royal Binder from 1638 onwards. The 1659 binding was therefore executed after at least 20 years of bookbinding for Louis XIV.
