Antique Eighteenth Century French Royal Fanfare Binding, "Semaine Sainte" circa 1703

Fanfare bindings are known for their extravagant hand applied gilt tooling, which cover the entire fields of the front and back cover boards. This example is lavished with gilt tooled fleurons, rosettes flowers and arabesques. In addition, there is a 1/2" wide gilt tooled frame of fleurons, rosettes and filets on both cover boards. The spine has five raised bands which form compartments filled by a central gilt tooled chiffre of crowned double "L"s (the chiffre of Philippe II, Regent). The endpapers are marbled paper as is typical of the period. The page edges are gilt. The board edgings are gilt tooled.

The text contains one extraordinary full page frontispiece engraving and three additional full page engravings. There are decorated and large capitals throughout the text and hand ruled red lines. There are cul de lampes throughout the text.

This example has important Royal provenance of Philippe II (chiffre on spine). Philippe Charles (2 August 1674 – 2 December 1723) was a member of the royal family of France and served as Regent of the Kingdom from 1715 to 1723. Born at his father's palace at Saint-Cloud, he was known from birth under the title of Duke of Chartres. His father was Louis XIV's younger brother Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, known as Monsieur; his mother was Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate.

In addition there is important provenance from the library of Hans von Furstenberg (ex-libris on the inside front board).

The binding (in-8) measures 7 3/4" x 5" x 1 3/4" thick. It is in very good and sound antique condition. The spine does have some very small missing bits of leather in compartments one and six, these do not interfere with the soundness of the binding.

Item ID: LC128