Designs based on Semy Patterns

Gold-TooledBookbindings

AndContemporaryCollectables.1500 – 1800.

Chapter 5: Designs based on SemyPatterns

By Ian Andrews

144

September 2013.

[email protected]

50, Wellhouse Lane, Mirfield

West Yorkshire WF14 0PN

145

146

Figure 1. Brébeuf, Entretiens solitaires ou Prières et Méditations pieuses.1660.

The arms and monograms are those of Marie-Thérèse who was

married to Louis XIV in June 1660.

Designs based on Semy PatternsDesigns consisting of the repeated use of a single motif are

commonly referred to as ‘semy’ patterns.i This term has proved

to be a convenient descriptor for gold designs of this type on

bookbindings, though it originates from heraldry, where it

involves some specific strictures. While the nature of the

motifs is not prescribed, their arrangement, patterning and

contribution to the construction of the overall design are of

great importance. Designs of this type are usually based on

the repetition of two or more motifs. However, the late

sixteenth century French binding, shown in Figure 1, is an

example of how a large number of repetitions of a single

ornamental motif, in this case a fleur-de-lys, precisely arranged,

creates a striking visual impact.

It is the purpose of this section to explore the nature of

designs on bindings where a large area of the cover is filled

with a distribution of small motifs, and to examine the degree

to which the formal heraldic term can be applied to them.

Attention will be given to the number and forms of the motifs,

the regularity of their positioning, the expectation of

alignment perfection, and the issue of ‘defacement’ in order

to accommodate other features of the overall decoration.147

As the Occurrence Charts show, semy-style designs as a feature

of the gold decoration on book covers appeared quite suddenly

around the mid-sixteenth century, and were particularly

popular in the third quarter of the sixteenth and the second

quarter of the seventeenth. Those of the earlier period are

usually of the semy-de-lys form, in which the ornamental motif is

a fleur-de-lys, whereas other types of motif are more usual in

later versions. Semy designs, other than semy-de-lys versions,

first appear in the decade before the mid-sixteenth century

and continue in vogue until towards the end of the first

quarter of the seventeenth, after which their usage declines

until the end of the third quarter. The earlier forms were

based on dots but by the middle of the third quarter of the

sixteenth century these designs were more frequently based on

other types of small motif, such as stars and rosettes.

Number and Form

The formal heraldic definition does not impose any limitation

either on the shape or the number of the motifs employed to

develop the semy pattern, the essential requirement being that

they are distributed in such a way as to suggest a section

taken from an infinite array of such motifs. In this sense,

the quincunx, centre-and-corners, design on Brant’s, The Shyppe

of Fooles, (see Borders chapter), could be argued to be a semy

148

design, in that it is composed of five, precisely placed,

identical motifs. On the other hand, a careful arrangement of

intricately painted motifs such as that illustrated in Figure

2, would not seem to constitute the characteristic visual

effect of a semy design, due to the fact that the flowering

plants, however beautifully placed and finely drawn, are of so

many different types that there is no clear establishment of

repetition.

Figure 2. A Mughal floral lacquered binding on a copy ofthe Qur’an, painted in gold on a black background and dating

from the Mughal Aurangzeb period, 1658-1707.149

In general terms, a sufficient number of motifs are needed in

order to define the requisite rows, columns and diagonals of

the semy structure. However, semy designs on bindings made for

royal patrons in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth

centuries are often extremely extensive and include very large

numbers of motifs. A binding made for Henry IV of France,

displays a pattern composed of over eight hundred motifs,

while the copy of Ptolemaeus, Claudius Figure 3, bound for the

English King Charles I, when still Prince of Wales, has

nearly seven hundred. In the case of the latter, the design

area is so closely packed with motifs that precision of

alignment is lost, resulting in a space so densely filled that

the motifs are almost in contact with each other. The dominant

motif of the thistle tends visually to establish the vertical

rows of that plant as the essential feature of the design,

thereby preventing the establishment, whether intentionally or

not, of a semy structure. Similarly, the obscuring of any

possible semy pattern is shown in Figure 4, where the fieldbetween the central arms and the corner pieces is filled with

a dense carpet of daisy flowers. Though ostensibly a semy

design, the complete absence of clear alignment leaves more

the impression of a firework display than of a precisely laid

out pattern. Such extensive use of repeated motifs in close-

packed arrangements, but without the precise alignment that

define formally strict semy patterns, is typical of the first

quarter of the seventeenth century.

150

151

Figure 3. Ptolomaeus Claudius bound for Charles I while still

prince of Wales. Charles was created Prince of Wales in 1616

and became king in 1625. The semy pattern is based on an

alternating arrangement of thistles and fleur-de-lys with a

small additional plant motif between them. The semy effect is

lost due to the dominance of the thistle and the design seems

to have been reduced to vertical columns of thistles.

152

Figure 4.

153

Regularity of positioning

Alignment and Spacing

Whereas it is common to observe that the motifs in a semy

pattern are neatly aligned along the horizontal and vertical

axes, it is apparent from the designs produced by the Eves

atelier in Paris that precision of alignment along the

diagonals of the pattern is the feature that most convincingly

conveys the perfection of semy draughtsmanship. To convey the

impression that the motifs are aligned along the diagonals it

appears to have been necessary to establish clear channels

between the motifs, and where these exist, the crispness of

the pattern is readily apparent.

If diagonal symmetry is paramount, it could be expected that

the linear structures resulting from duplication of the saltire

or lozenge, produced by joining the mid-points of each side of a

bordering frame, would come within the category of semy

designs. Such an array of small compartments certainly has the

requisite symmetry, but lacks the essential ornamental

features. If, instead, the same form of construction were to

be achieved using a collection of individual diamond-shaped

tiles, neatly arranged over the design area, with spaces

preserved between them, the result would effectively be a semy

pattern.

154

Furthermore, if the semy-de-lys pattern of Figure 6 is viewed at

‘glancing incidence,’ that is when held flat at eye-level, the

fleur-de-lys motifs appear as if transformed into diamond

lozenges. This experiment makes apparent the similarity

between the fleur-de-lys shape and a diamond lozenge, and perhaps

reveals why designs based on this motif are the most

geometrically precise of all the semy patterns on

bookbindings. Comparably precise semy designs have been

produced using the three-tongued flame of the French Order of

St Esprit, which embodies the essential diamond-shaped

outline. However in designs in which the binder has attempted

to combine the diamond lattice with the semy by placing a

small motif at the centre of each compartment, as, for

example, in Figure 7, the diamond lattice tends to appear so

dominant that the semy effect is not apparent.

155

Figure 6. Heures de Nostre Dame a l’usage dee Rome. The binding

bears the crowned initial of Louise of Loraine, Queen of

156

France and is believed to have been bound after the

assassination of Henry III in 1589.

157

Figure 7. The Dance of Death by Hans Holbein bound in London mid-1790s. Itmight be debated whether this is a semy pattern or a diaperwork design

except that whereas the diaperwork has been very accurately laid out, themotifs at the centre of each diamond are not so well positioned. As a

result, the motif arrangement is diminished compared to the diaper lattice.

Quite apart from the quantity of motifs and their placement in

the design, there are examples where the shape of the motif

itself prevents achievement of the very precise, visual, semy

effect. An example of this is the design on the book bound for

Robert Dudley, believed to date from the third quarter of the

sixteenth century, shown in Figure 8. In this design, the

motif is a standing lion, and in those areas where it was

possible, the

binder placed the

motifs quite

accurately

along diagonals. The

semy effect has

been lost, however,

since the length of

each lion tail in

one diagonal set

intrudes between the

heads of those in the

next by just enough to

prevent the eye

158

perceiving the clear channel that should have been created

between them.

Figure 8. An English binding of Pedacius Dioscorides, de medicinali

material, for Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1532-88.

Amongst motifs employed in the construction of semy designs,

dots might not be thought of as particularly ornamental, yet

159

there are far more composed from dots than from any other

motif. Indeed, one of the most precise forms of semy pattern

is based on the use of a tight cluster of three dots. Designs

of this style of the sixteenth century, of which Figure 9 is a

typical example, have the distinct appearance of precision

alignment as a direct consequence of the shape of the triple-

dot motif. With the dots arranged as if at the interstices of

an equilateral triangle, their edges naturally create the

diagonal line structure so important in establishing the

impression of visual perfection of a formal semy.

Two other examples can be cited where the fundamental semy

structure became lost in the manner of its usage. On a 1704

copy of The Book of Common Prayer, notional corner semy patterns

composed of a flower-like, crowned royal monogram, were

reduced to mere agglomerates of motifs because their

orientation and spacing were adjusted in each row to make them

‘fit the space’.ii Frequently, the neat rows of motifs have

been tooled to conform to the curved edges of the

compartments, thereby destroying the fundamental stricture of

a semy design.iii The binding shown as Figure 9, is a semy-style pattern where precision has been lost due in part to the

shape of the motif and to their rather disordered placement.

160

161

Figure 9. A French binding of the early eighteenth centuryin what might ostensibly appear to be a semy design composed

of the flame motifs of the Order of St. Esprit. The effect

however, is lost due to the disordered placement and alignment

of the motifs

The semy designs of the later sixteenth century were mainly

French and stand out on account of the accuracy of placement

of the motifs. Semy-style designs of the seventeenth century,

on the other hand,, are in general, much less precise and the

rows and lines of motifs are usually seen to meander and

depart from the military precision that characterised their

sixteenth century predecessors. It is not unusual for the

extent of this relaxation of the rules of layout to have

become so apparent that the resulting conglomeration of motifs

is scarcely more than unstructured in-filling of the space.

The decoration on the Donors Register of Durham Cathedral, begun in

1634, for example, could be considered to have been intended

as a semy design of diamond-shaped foliar motifs, but the

result has the appearance of having become so hot that the

motifs have slid from the proper places and congregated at the

top and bottom of the design areaiv.

162

163

Figure 10. A Swiss armorial binding of the third quarterof the sixteenth century. The design consists of an elaborate

scrolling centre-piece inserted into a plated centre and

corners arrangement with a triple dot semy pattern between

them. The border is a repetitive structure of Arabic motifs.

‘Defacing’ and Distortion

164

It has been stated that the ideal form of semy pattern, based

on heraldic usage, is a section seemingly cut from an infinite

array of repeated motifs. Accordingly, at the edges, and where

other features are introduced in the central part of the

design, it is to be expected that part-forms of the motif

would be apparent and necessary to complete the design. In

heraldic terms, this is referred to as ‘defacing’. The idea

that the array of motifs could be positioned around the

central medallion, for example, would not be permissible. If a

binder were to achieve comparable perfection, he would require

a collection of tools enabling him to impress whatever

fraction of the semy motif might be required. This would

clearly have been impractical on grounds of expense, and

because each tool had to be individually cut by hand. Part-

forms of tooled impressions are visible at the sides of Figure

8 and the bottom of Figure 6. While on a very small number of

bindings the binder has been able to avail himself of a

patron’s largesse, more often it is clear that he has

attempted to achieve the required part-form by impressing the

central medallion on top of those of the semy motifs.

On other bindings a trompe l’oeil ruse was employed using special

insertions to give the appearance of the semy pattern

continuing beneath a border. This involved the addition of

shallow, triangular ornaments along the inner edge of the

border, as in Figure 11, which convincingly conveys the

impression that a complete ‘defaced’ semy has been achieved.

165

166

Figure 11 . Debucourt, Aquarelle originale pour Héro et Léandre. The semy

design includes a set of shallow inserts around the border

which produces the trompe l’oeil illusion that the semy pattern is

‘defaced’ when it actually is not.

The usual practice, however, seems to have been to distort the

arrangement of motifs in the vicinity of a central medallion,

or similar insertion, to give the impression that the feature

was embedded within the semy pattern. In every case, even when

placement of the motifs appears to conform to the ideal

layout, when the design is held at eye-level, and the observer

looks along the diagonals of the pattern, it will be readily

apparent how far the binder has had to distort the semy to

incorporate the inserted features. Figure 10, is an example of

a seventeenth-century semy design, in which the motifs appear

to have been correctly placed and to have been defaced

suitably around the border edging, yet when viewed at glancing

incidence, the degree of distortion introduced by the binder

to embed the central medallion is quite surprising. The design

on Platine’s Les Généalogies (included as Figure 10, in the chapter

on Fan Designs), is an example of the extent of the problem a

binder could face in this respect: thirteen large liturgical

fans, each having seventeen spokes had to be inserted into a

semy design of fleur-de-lys and crowned-Ls in an alternating array

twenty-four motifs wide by thirty high.

167

Variants

Although the range of design variants within the category of

semys is comparatively small, two are particularly

significant. Both are French and specific to the late

sixteenth century. One is associated with the Confrerie de la

Mort in the 1580s and characterised by the prevalence of tear

drops, crossed bones and death’s head motifs while the other,

bound for the Order of Saint Esprit between 1585 and 1598, is

an array of ellipses with floral motif centres, emphasising

the emblems of the Order Those of the Confrerie de la Mort are

also frequently referred to as Penitential bindings and are

characterised by their stark, funereal simplicity, whereas the

Saint Esprit bindings are altogether more joyous, with the

focus of each elliptical frame emphasising the floral and

other emblems of the Order.

Bindings of the Order of Saint Esprit

The Order of Saint Esprit was founded by Henri III to

celebrate his accession to the throne of France in 1578 ,

and became the highest of the French chivalric orders.

Bindings with this style of semy design, are characterised by

an array of closely-packed elliptical frames, usually

embellished with pen flecks, or, on occasion, ‘ovales de feuillages’.

Within these frames, are depicted a variety of floral and

other motifs, including plant-forms with acorns, thistle and

other flowers, monograms, a heart pierced with an arrow, a

smiling sun, and a diving bird that was the symbol of the

Order. Figure 12.168

Although this semy design is particularly associated with the

books of the Order, it was not necessarily entirely unique to

it. A Parisian binding, dated 1556, bound for Fürst Peter

Ernest von Mansfeld features a design of considerable

similarity in that it is constructed from a set of small

frames and includes small plant-forms. At its centre, the arms

of von Mansfeld are enseigned with the Burgundian Order of the

Golden Fleece.v Von Mansfeld had been created a Knight of this

Order in 1545. Contemporary with the bindings of the Order is

that on Officium B Mariae Virginis bound for Jacques-August de Thou

in 1586, wherevi the cover design consists of a large array of

ellipses, each embellished with pen-fleck leafage exactly like

those of the Order, but containing alternately his monogram

and the gadfly from his arms.

169

Figure 12. Appien, Appiani Alexandrini Romanarum Historiarum Lib XIIvii. Bound after1588.

This pattern of leafy ellipses is characteristic of binding designs onbooks of the Order of St. Esprit.

The Compagnie des Confrères de la Mort

A volume of Les Cantiques du sieur de Maisonfleur gentil homme français,

printed in 1586 and bound by the Parisian Eves bindery in

olive morocco leather, is decorated with seven elliptical

frames in the style of the elliptical semys of the Order of

Saint Esprit. The emblems in three of these frames are a skull

and cross-bones, ( le crane et les os) and in a further three, tear

drops, as distinct from the triple-tongued flames of the Order

of Saint Esprit. Henri, described by his friend, Corbinelli,

as ‘our Penitent King’ had been strongly influenced by renewed

Counter-Reformation religious fervour, represented by Charles

Borromeo, and may have found solace from his tragic love life

in the latter’s call to penitence and strict self-discipline.

In 1583 he began founding congregations of penitents and, in

1585, formed the small, and very select, Compagnie des

Confrères de la Mort, whose nineteen sombrely clad members,

met once a week for prayer and litany followed by mutual

flagellation. Books of these congregations are recognisable by

their macabre cover decoration which includes coffins,

skeletons and semys of death’s heads, crossed bones and tear

drops. Figure 12.

170

Figure 13. Martyrologium Romanum bound in Paris 1588.

171

Dotting

A tool for producing a minute, round, solid gold disc on a

leather bookbinding consists of no more than a length of round

metal stock, suitably mounted in a wooden handle. Arrays of

tiny gold dots, produced by a simple tool made from a length

of round metal stock, mounted in a wooden handle, are commonly

seen on books bound between the early sixteenth and late

eighteenth centuries. The nature of their usage and

arrangement varies considerably: while the essential feature

of a semy pattern, as we have seen, is that the array of

motifs is equally spaced and well-aligned, the term, pointille,

is used to describe decorative goldwork where the elements of

the pattern are composed entirely of a series of dots. There

are also many examples of the use of extensive areas of gold

dots on bookbindings which neither constitute a pattern

element nor conform to a regular array, and may therefore be

classified as random dotting.

Pointillé

The essence of a decorative pattern in this style is that,

although it consists of a series of curving lines, each linear

element is actually composed from a series of tiny dots.

Statistical studies appear to indicate that it is a decorative

ornament occurring particularly on books bound in France

around the middle of the seventeenth century, and, more

generally, on bindings of the eighteenth century, between the

late first quarter and the mid-fourth quarter. Nixon

considered that a binding in the characteristic ‘Primitive 172

Fanfare’ style, associated with de Piques, in which the

tooling was broken into a series of short dashed lines, should

be considered to be a fore-runner to the pointillé style,viii while

Quaritch associated the style with Le Gascon, who he

considered first employed extensive patterns of extremely

small gold dots on his bindings from around 1625. He commented

that while these were initially used as an accessory to the

main decoration, they very rapidly became the principal part

of the design and, accordingly, Quaritch placed Le Gascon

among the great inventive masters of the art.ix Additionally,

he claimed that usage of the pointillé style in France diminished

after about 1660, its last major exponent being Boyet, in

whose family the technique remained extant until around 1730.

173

Figure 14. A section of a doily-lace design of the mid-seventeenth century achieved in pointillé tooling. The

effectiveness of the combination of dotted lines and small

areas of solid metal in creating the appearance of fine lace

is readily apparent.

The pointillé technique itself was not an invention of the

seventeenth century, and may have originated in the employment

of beaded filigree as a surface ornamentation. In this

technique, common by the first millennium CE, and subsequently

used on ‘Treasure’ bindings, especially those of Byzantium,

decorative scrolling was produced by fusing beaded wires of

gold to a gold plate. These wires could readily be beaded

simply by repetitive tapping with a hammer and sharp edge,

producing an effect almost identical to that of a scroll-

tooled pointillé decoration on a book cover. It seems likely,

given that designs on bookbindings tend to follow those used

in other art forms, that the emergence of this decorative

technique in the seventeenth century, is due to the influence

of the art of pique.

174

Figure 15. A Louis XIV snuff box illustrating thesimilarity between Pointillé decoration on leather

bookbindings and that produced by inserting fine points of

solid gold and silver into tortoise-shell.

Piqué originated in France in the early seventeenth century and

was a very popular decorative technique throughout the

succeeding two hundred years, on materials such as wood, horn

and tortoise-shell to make luxury items. So significant was

it, it has been claimed that if all other evidence of French

art and culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

were lost, it could be reconstructed from the piqué work of the

period. Designs in piqué were first drilled through softened

175

ivory or tortoise-shell and then ‘pricked in’ with gold and

silver points,x producing a very similar visual appearance of

dotted scrolls to those achieved in pointille work. In the time

of Louis XIII, pique designs consisted of inset points of gold

or silver, whereas by the reign of the next monarch, it was

the practice to include metal strips, and, by the late

seventeenth century, shaped items of mother-of-pearl, such as

birds and flowers began to be included into what became known

as piqué posé designs, which became more widely used during the

eighteenth century.

It is first worth considering the scale of the task binders

took on when they chose to incorporate large areas of dotting

in a cover design. In the pointillé technique, established motifs

such as the sea-shell spiral, which were previously impressed

as smooth, curving forms, were, instead, achieved as a string

of gold dots. It might be assumes that the binder constructed

each scrolling form free-hand merely by the careful placement

of each succeeding dot in relation to those already impressed,

but the meticulous regularity and smoothness of such shapes

suggests that some additional aid was used. It is likely,

therefore, that either the dotting was done individually, by

hand, with the dots being placed into a shallow blind

impression made previously using a standard motif tool, or ,

alternatively, it is possible that the standard tools could

themselves have been modified, by sawing and filing, to

convert their surface into a profile more like a saw blade,

which, when impressed, would leave a series of dots. This

latter technique, however, was unlikely to succeed, since the

176

mechanics are such that gold would almost certainly be bonded

to the leather between the points.

Random dots

Unstructured distributions of dotting are observed on many

bindings from the early sixteenth to the late eighteenth

centuries. The Occurrence Charts show that their use appears

to have been particularly popular around the middle of the

sixteenth century, and again at the end of the third quarter.

It became the practice for areas of a design that would

otherwise have been devoid of decoration to be sprinkled with

gold dots. As for example in Figure 15. When the dots are

larger, such decorative infilling has been described as

‘snowflake,’ while some examples of the use of small dots are

so densely packed that they almost appear to be uniformly

gilded. Study of these dotted areas under a microscope shows

that the placement of dots tends to conform to the edges of

the space they are filling, which indicates they were tooled,

one by one, by hand. This technique is likely to have been

adopted by bookbinders from its use on memorial brasses, known

as manière cribléexi. The use of intensive dotting to establish a

background is also seen on bindings of the cuir cisélé, carved

leather style that has been particularly associated with

German binders. The technique had also been in use from the

fifteenth century in illuminations and prints, in which

certain parts embellished with gold dotting are described as,

‘dotted prints.’xii

177

Figure 16. . Strapwork design on a densely dotted background. The dotting is extremely closely packed and has been used in the same way as

repetitive punching was used on bindings of the cuir cisilé style to create a

178

ground foil to the design. The technique was also a standard procedure on

memorial brasses for the same purpose. The dots may be seen to have been

placed to follow the outlines of the design elements and thereafter just

placed to fill the intervening space as uniformly as possible

179

Figure 17. An example of the effect described as ‘SnowFlake’ dotting. The dots are of more varied size and though

not as closely packed as in the manière criblée style and randomly

arranged to provide decorative infill.

On a binding of significant dimensions, the entire background

to the strapwork design is densely covered with dots. On one

binding, nearly 100,000 separate impressions were required to

achieve the incredibly even, dense carpet of gold points. This

effect could not have been achieved by a stamping process to

apply dots to the entire board area prior to laying in a

strapwork mosaic, since microscopic examination reveals that

dots do not disappear under the edges of the strapwork

ribbons, but are arranged in rows conforming to the curvature

of the ribbon, and run approximately parallel to it. This

points to the dots being put in by hand after the strapwork

ribbons had been established. This raises the question as to

why the binder would have been prepared to commit to so much

additional labour. Perhaps the best explanation is that

offered by Hayward,xiii that the brilliant effect of a myriad of

tiny gold dots brought designs to life. Since the tiny ‘mirror

effect’ of each gold dot would reflect light at a different

angle, a book covered with such dots would literally sparkle

and twinkle. Decorative metal objects were being faceted in

order to achieve this twinkling effect in candle-light, and, 180

by the late seventeenth century, the availability of brighter

lighting demanded closer imitation of gemstones to maximise

this effect.

In parallel with the usage of dots to form semy-type patterns

and decorative in-filling, a more free-style usage of small

motifs, such as a ring or a star,appears on bindings starting

around the mid-1540s. In contrast to the main parts of the

design, these tiny rings appear to have been inserted, almost

perhaps as an after-thought, to enhance the goldwork, and to

ornament areas of the main design that might otherwise have

looked rather empty. The distribution of these tiny motifs

might best be described as having been sprinkled over the main

parts of the design, or as‘floaters’ within it. Ring floaters

are most noticeable on bindings of the third quarter of the

seventeenth century, at the turn of the century and especially

around the middle of the eighteenth, while rosettes and stars

appear to have been especially popular throughout the second

half of the seventeenth century, and for most of the

eighteenth. The usage of all these motifs appears

predominantly on English and French bindings, with only rarer

appearances on Dutch and Italian ones. In the seventeenth

century, floating rings appear around twice as often on

English bindings as on French, whereas the reverse is true of

the eighteenth.

181

182

Figure 18. Office de la Quinzaine de Pasque, Paris 1739. A centre and

corners design with semy-de-lys patterns in the corner pieces

and with the background area between the corners and centre

enhanced with a variety of small floating motifs.

183

184

i In heraldic definition the term is considered to be synonymous with, Aspersed, Poudré, Powdered, Replenished, Semé, Strewed and Strewn.ii Pearson D Provenance Research Fig 4.19iii Sothebys’ Catalogue of, Fine Continental Books and Manuscripts, Science and Medicine, London5th December 1991 item 255 p105.iv Pearson D A Durham Binding of 1634, The Book Collector vol 43(4) Winter 1994 p553-55.v Sotheby’s Catalogue of Fine Continental Books, London 5th December 1991 item 172.vi Sotheby’s Catalogue of Fine Continental Books, London 5th December 1991 item 172.vii Catalogue for the sale of the Bibliothèque René Descamps-Scrive pt I, LéopoldCarteret, Paris 1925. Pl 6, p5viii Nixon H M Twelve Centuries of Bookbinding p254.ix Quaritch B. p. xix Piqué – How to do it Antique Collector p133……………xi Trevick Maniere Criblee. P44 fig 48 ex on 3741 of 1539 on infillxii Dotted Print Antique Collector 1938.xiii Hayward J.F. (1949) French Books - The National Book League Exhibition Apollo p12-14.