This binding was made in Paris by Antoine-Michel Padeloup around 1731-33. The four different large blocks used on it denote a departure from the more usual 18th-century French binding decoration achieved with small engraved hand tools. Both the size of this book and the need to bind a large number of copies for the royal household and as presentations, fairly quickly after it had at last appeared, encouraged the use of blocks. Sets of heavy decorative blocks could be fitted together in a number of combinations and even very large books could be decorated successfully with the use of only three or four blocks. 

On the binding of the copy illustrated here only four blocks were used, but there are also copies of the Sacre which were decorated to a very similar design with five blocks. A fair number of copies were bound by Antoine-Michel Padeloup and signed with his engraved ticket. The blocks used on the binding illustrated here are identical with those used on such signed bindings. Antoine-Michel Padeloup was the third son of Michel Padeloup (1654?-1725). He was born in 1685, apprenticed to his father and had probably become a master binder and established his own atelier by 1712 when he married Marguérite Renault. He lived successively in Rue de la Parcheminerie, Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue de Cluny, at the south-west corner of Place de la Sorbonne. In 1733 he became the Relieur du Roy. He died in 1758. 

Mirjam Foot 

* For more information about this book and its bindings see Culot 1970, pp. 36-51 (décor B). See also Barber 2013, I, pp. 210-211, 310-312 (FE2); II, no. 430.