To Elisabeth of Romania (1894-1956), former Queen of Greece, with a friendly offer of Karmitz' personal savings of 20,000 francs to ease the Princess's financial worries, as she was alarmed at seeing Elisabeth's disquiet the other day: "Malheureusement elles ne s'élèvent qu'à 20.000 frc. mais j'espère que vous n'y verrez qu'une geste de vraie amitié et une preuve de la profonde affection que je vous porte [...]".
Highly interesting letter to the fellow archaeologist and historian Philippe Delamain in Jarnac, announcing the receipt of a statuette of Diana for the production of a mould and casts and arguing that a hatchet found in Macqueville was "certainly Frankish" based on comparable finds in Germany: "Diane vient d'arriver en parfait état. Vous avez dû, contrairement à nos conventions, payer le port, car on ne nous a rien réclamé au chemin de fer. Aussi, sans avis contraire, nous vous reverrons, avec l'original et un exemplaire du moulage, le moulage fait d'un autre objet, de manière à vous dédommager des frais d'expédition. Mais nous vous devons toujours, et par surcroît, des remerciements. Votre note paraitra dans la Revue archéol. avec un croquis de la statue. La hache de Macqueville est certainement franque. Deux haches trouvées en Allemagne, Alterthümer II 7.15 et Centralmuseum XIV. 7 présentent avec elle une certaine analogie de forme. Il y a presque identité avec une hache du musée d'Upsal, crée de 1000 ap. J. C. environ (époque des Normands). D'autres haches analogues [...] sont dessinées dans l'Archéologie de Londres, 1881, t. XLVI p. 442".
Delamain's note on the statuette was indeed published in the Revue archéologique, 3, XXXIV, p. 146f. There he recounts that the object had been discovered in an ossuary in Richard near Saint-Fraigne (Charente) by a local farmer, who believed it represented St John the Baptist. Delamain saw and identified the statuette during an archaeological expedition in 1891 and acquired it for his personal collection.
On stationery of the director of the Musée de Saint-Germain. Minimal foxing and some rust stains from a paper clip. In his discussion of the hatchet, Reinach added a little sketch.
Fine Koberger edition of the Institutes of Justinian, the students' textbook that forms part of the sixth-century codification of Roman law known as the Corpus Juris Civilis. Printed in red and black Gothic typeface with the gloss of Accursius, this rare edition from the press of Dürer's godfather is sought after for the high quality of its printing.
The present copy was bound, sometime in the 1880s, in a superb faux Grolier binding by the notorious forger Théodore Hagué (1823-91). Hagué had been trained at Reims by the master Jean-Baptiste Tinot whose speciality was, according to his advertisement, the "reproduction of antique bindings of all periods". In 1858 he relocated to London, where he worked in the workshop of Joseph Zaehnsdorf (1816-86), bookbinder to the King of Hanover, who produced bindings "in the Monastic, Grolier, Maioli and Illuminated styles". It was there that Hagué met the famous bookseller Bernard Quaritch as well as Guillaume Libri, who guided him in the restoration of authentic Renaissance bindings.
On his return to France at the end of the 1860s, Hagué began restoring old books and making fake bindings. His clients at that time included Joseph Renard and Ambroise-Firmin Didot. After the Franco-Prussian War he escaped his creditors to Brussels, where he set up his workshop under the name of "J. Caulin" and made many bindings in the 16th century style, which he offered to Quaritch as authentic. Indeed, towards the end of the 1880s Quaritch became doubtful of their authenticity and returned an exemplar with the arms of Catherine de' Medici that seemed recent to him. Hagué passed away in Normandy in 1891 (cf. Fontaine).
In the 1880s Quaritch sold several of Hagué's bindings to Charles Fairfax Murray, but after 1885 the businessman John Blacker (1823-96) became his sole customer for these bindings. In all, Blacker acquired 109 Hagué-bound books; their supposedly prestigious provenances included Jean Grolier, Thomas Mahieu, Anne de Montmorency, François I, Henri II, and Diane de Poitiers.
This specimen is one of those acquired by Blacker, described as no. 59 of his 1897 sales catalogue. One of no fewer than eleven fake Grolier bindings in his collection, it reproduces a painted interlacing decoration typical of those made in the 1550s by the royal binder Gomar Estienne. In the centre of the upper cover is Grolier's supralibros "Io Grolierii et amicorum" (usually placed near the bottom edge in authentic bindings); the lower cover bears Grolier's motto, "Portio mea Domine sit in terra viventium" ("Be Thou my portion, o Lord, in the land of the living", quoted from Psalms 142, verse 5).
A 16th century woodcut pasted to the blank space above the text on the first text leaf. First and final gathering very slightly misaligned, but altogether a complete and very well preserved copy in a splendidly notorious binding.
Provenance: 1) 18th century handwritten ownership "Teige" on first blank, obscured by a black stamp; 2) John Blacker (Sotheby's, Catalogue of a Remarkable Collection of Books in Magnificent Modern Bindings, 11 Nov. 1897, no. 59); 3) the library of the French numismatist Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Beaulieu (1905-95, his bookplate); 4) collection of Jean Marcel Stefgen (1927-2017, his bookplate).
