Les Loisirs Des Bords Du Loing, Ou Recueil De Pièces Fugitives

[Langlée by Montargis: C. Lequatre, 1784. Contemporary gilt-ruled porphyry calf (rubbed, bumped, joints cracked), flat spine gilt (crown chipped), gilt-lettered black morocco label, all edges gilt.

First Edition, ?first issue, only fifty copies printed. It was overseen by Pierre-Alexandre Léorier de l'Isle (1744-1826), who began experimenting with vegetable papers in the 1770s at the Langlée mill of which he was director. The Loing river powered the mill as it passed Montargis.
The work is in three parts. The historical jottings by local literati (lxp.) and the often amusing occasional verse by printer, poet and Montargis magistrate Pelée de Varennes (139p.) are beautifully executed in small type on rose-colored paper. The remarkable Supplément has fifteen leaves printed on rectos only. Three of these leaves are rose on their rectos and white on their versos, an effect Léorier achieved by introducing dye into the slurry prior to making the sheets. The famous three sample leaves, announced as Essais de Papiers Fabriqués avec de l'Herbe, de la Soie et du Tilleul, were manufactured, respectively, from grass, silk and lime bark, and sport poetry: "the paper is thin, very smooth and has no chain or wire lines" (Basanoff, tr.). THE VERSES ON TWO OF THESE LEAVES TOUT LÉORIER'S EXTRAORDINARY TECHNICAL ADVANCES IN ECOLOGICAL PAPERMAKING, as does the poem on page 72. The book concludes with ten more especially striking bicolor printed leaves: intense red and dark blue, gray and yellow-green, etc.
Les Loisirs has two issues. That offered here, on rose paper with 139 pages plus the fifteen-leaf Supplément, and the traditional rag paper 152-page version share the same setting of type to page 128 (L4v). Ours closes with a final poem in nine strophes (pp. 129-32), a table of contents and the Supplément discussed above. The other issue has slightly altered preliminaries and concludes with four other poems and an adjusted table of contents. The rose paper copies' watermark of a laurel wreath and three lilies is encircled by the motto, Lilia quando favent, Vincitur Arte Labor (When the Lilies nod, Labor is conquered by Art). The traditional rag paper issue watermark is a cardinal's hat, flowers, pot, etc. (Heawood 3695).
It is well known that the literary contents and the order of pieces in the Supplément vary copy to copy. However, close examination reveals THE SETTING OF TYPE OF THE SUPPLÉMENT POEMS ALSO VARIES COPY TO COPY, suggesting the sample and bicolor leaves may have been produced on demand for individual recipients, or at least produced at different times. In good condition (short tear in the blank margin of pp. xii-xiv), oval blue stamp and signature of politician and historian Louis-Nicolas-Jean-Joachim de Cayrol (1775-1859; Catalogue (1861) 1095), engraved bookplate of papermaker Paul Darblay (1825-1908) mottoed Val cognatrix.
¶Breton-Gravereau, "La Fabrication manuelle du papier en Occident" in L'Aventure des écritures: matières et formes [Exposition BnF] edd. Breton-Gravereau & Thibault (1998) 167 & reprod. 151a; Basanoff, "Le Papier botanique" in Revue Française d'Histoire du Livre 14 (1977) 107-125; Barbier, "Les Innovations techniques" in Histoire de l'édition française II: 39 (38 reprod. of Langlée papermaking equipment); Dictionnaire encylopédique du livre II: 727; Hunter, Papermaking 327-8 & 610 "50 copies printed".