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COMPARATIVE IMPLEMENTOLOGY

Sixteenth Century Finishing Tools - France

Simon Vostre - Heures, Rome c.1515

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If you search the digital collection of BLIND-TOOLED BOOKBINDINGS FROM THE BIBLIOTHEQUE SAINTE-GENEVIEVE (12th -18th CENTURIES), for anything related to Simon Vostre, you find two bindings. We are going to look at both, the first is shown above, along with the catalogue data. As we are researching these bindings to try to find out if they relate in anyway to the bindings from the atelier of Louis XII - Francois Ier, we must first try to identify the roulettes.


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Comparative Diagram 1 - Roulette Renaissance continu - Gid type RCi rubbing vs imprint from binding OEXV283

(click on this image to see a 300 dpi enlargement)

At first sight, and even with enlarged images you might think this roulette is the same as Denise Gid's type RCi, however after a very careful examination you will see that it is not exactly the same. To compare a roulette such as this one with the 1984 catalogue diagrams of Denise Gid you need to follow an elaborate procedure. She has illustrated 60 variations of the Renaissance continu roulette. They are all of different sizes and complexity, and they all have been illustrated from a different starting point. As we now know the design of this roulette form derives from a specific decorative panel (click here to see a page on this) and logically each rubbing example should start with an orientation that is the same as the original panel i.e. with footed table at the bottom. Probably a study of the variations of the shape and form of this table would be an easier way to sort out these roulettes. However let us proceed with what we have. This work cannot be done without a computer and digital editing program such as Photoshop. First we need to scan the catalogue rubbings and resize them to an enlarged size, such as 300 dpi. The rubbings have been printed at 100 percent scale, they are the actual size of the rubbing, this is too small for our needs. Next we need to resize the digital image from BSG, this is easy to do because they have included a scale with the reproduction. The image you download from BSG is at 72 dpi, you should transform this to 300 dpi, then copy and past a section of the scale, lets say a 20 cm section in a new image file. Open the image size menu, you will notice that it is less than actual size, now enter 20 cm as the new image size, before you actually change the size note the percentage of the change in the file size for height and width, they will be roughly the same but as you are really just concerned with height note this percentage of change. Now you can return to your binding image and change the size of the image with the appropriate percentage to arrive at a 100 percent scale at 300 dpi. Easily checked by measuring the scale. Now you can copy and paste a strip of roulette imprint into the catalogue plates to try to find a matching imprint rubbing. Size is very important in this work, you can eliminate a lot of searching by just looking for something that is about the right size in width. If you are lucky you will find a match quite quickly however in the case of our OEXV283 binding, no example of this roulette has yet been identified. We can rename this roulette RCi-2.


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Comparative Diagram 2 - Roulette Fleurettes - Gid type FL j11 and FLj20 rubbings vs imprints from binding OEXV283

(click on this image to see a 300 dpi enlargement)

Next we will try to identify the interior roulettes, this won't be easy because they have deteriorated somewhat which is to be expected after 500 or so years, still we can attempt to find a match in Gid's precious catalogue. In Comparative Diagram 2, I show, what I think may be the closest Gid type examples, they are close but not perfect, if you compare FLj11 to Flj20 you will see just how similar these two examples are, yet they are different and I am afraid that the imprints from OEXV283 do not match them perfectly. Therefore we will not be able to find a matching binding with the same tools in Gid's catalogue. We are searching for bindings from the atelier of Simon Vostre, one of the most celebrated printers of the 16th century, we know that he produced thousands of books, if his atelier bound and decorated just a few of them with roulettes we should find examples. If this binding was from his atelier then we would expect these same roulettes to have shown up somewhere by now, as they have not we might suspect that this binding was not made by the atelier of Simon Vostre. However as our concern is with the relationship of the bindings from the atelier of Louis XII - François Ier and those of Simon Vostre, we note that there is no sign of any common tools that could link this binding to the atelier of Louis XII.



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(click on this image to see a 300 dpi enlargement)

Fortunately there is one more important clue as to who the binder might have been, The page edges have been gauffered with some sort of inscription. It has been noted in the BSG description as illisibles which translates roughly to unreadable, perhaps if we find another such inscription this mystery will be solved.

On the next page we will examine the second BSG Simon Vostre example.

about the author VIRTUAL BOOKBINDING



l.a.miller@mail.pf



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