EMBROIDERED BINDING.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Notebook. A charming mid-19th-century French embroidered binding. The geometric pattern of the design, executed in interlaced gilt, green, pink, and purple threads, is rather unusual for this period, when figurative motifs were the most popular. The contents of the notebook span several years, approximately from 1844 to 1856. Included are accounts of money paid, spent, and gifted, contacts and addresses of people in Paris and Lille (one recurring multiple times), and personal notes. The interests and concerns, the frequent appearance of female names as acquaintances (such as Pauline, Amelie, and Marie), and the style of the binding, strongly suggest that the owner was a Parisian gentlewoman.The accounts suggest that her job involved buying and supplying furniture to customers. For example, she records advancing money to Pauline "for her pendulum" and paying her for a "mobilier de dames" (a lady's dressing table). The owner appears to have been fascinated by clocks; on another page, she copied a quote from Voltaire: "L'univers m'embarrasse et je ne puis songer que cette horloge existe et n'ait pas d'horloger" ("The universe troubles me, and I cannot imagine that this clock exists without a clockmaker").Science also features among her interests. A curious note concerns the analysis of the contents of the "eau de puits foré" (water from drilled wells) carried out by "Deville", likely the chemist Henry Deville; it includes a breakdown of chemical components (i.e. sulfates, sodium

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