17TH CENTURY MASTERBOOK Hieremia DREXELIO - Horologium... Lot 30

[17TH CENTURY MASTERBOOK] Hieremia DREXELIO - Horologium Auxiliaris Tutelaris Angeli Col. Aggripinae (Cologne) 1631 - Fine, careful edition of this famous work by Jeremiah Drexel, a German Jesuit father and preacher to Maximilian of Bavaria. A superb copy in a magnificent binding by Macé Ruette, produced for the man of letters and academician Henri-Louis Habert de Montmort (1600-1679), in full contemporary red morocco (19th-century marbled paper endpapers), edged with four sprays of gilded stippling, framed with fillets, gilded edges, corner fleurons, four-lobed central medallion mosaiced in various shades of morocco with the numeral HLHM and four gold-stamped fermesses: This binding, known as "aux fermesses", was long attributed to Le Gascon (notably by bookbinder Marius Michel, Damascène Morgan in his catalogs, etc.).), before being rightly reattributed to Macé Ruette (active bookbinder from 1606, bookbinder to the King from 1634 to 1644). The copy is in very good condition, with slight rubbing and a small tear at the head, not serious, gilded lace borders on the flyleaves. The edition features a charming engraved title-frontispiece and two engravings. "Until 1620, the style [of his bindings] was limited to the conventional models of the time: fanfares, lozenges and spandrels, Duseuil-style framing. It was shortly after 1620 that the young Habert de Montmort [...] began a collection of elzéviers, which he bought and had bound by Ruette as they were published. (R. Esmerian,II, p.9) And he considers that these bindings "mark the very first attempts at dotted-iron decoration. It is still a very timid attempt at sheaf decoration, which, in a more elaborate form, was soon to hold a primordial place for fifty years." The library of Habert de Montmort, a great collector, was dispersed in 1682, and although Esmerian estimated that his library contained around 35 volumes bound in this way by Macé Ruette, the history of this copy seems to have escaped bibliographers? It is one of the very few copies made of books dated after 1630. In-16, (8) 179pp (1) Provenance: Henri-Louis Habert de Montmort