Each volume in a custom-made black leather clamshell by P. Goy and G. Vilaine, inner linings of red velvet.

The deception turns on the beechwood boards of the two fifteenth-century bindings, whose inner surfaces carry elaborate relief inscriptions and imagery purporting to be the opening and closing plates (TABULA I–XXX) of a thirty-table “Charta magna” granted by René d’Anjou at Aix-en-Provence, and produced by an otherwise unknown technique the author christened “xyloglyphy”. - La Plane’s 1845 Notices bibliographiques is, in its first half, a surprisingly competent bibliographical analysis of the two editions; it is also the engine of the fraud, presenting the boards as an “incontestable” pre-Gutenberg printing process, executed “without cutting tools, merely a pen”, and styling the relief as a “veritable embroidery on wood”. In short, the author asserts that these beechwood boards originally formed the first and last parts of 30 “xyloglyphic” (a neologism coined by the author) plates for a Great Charter granted by René to the citizens of Sisteron.

The author of the monograph appears to have deliberately obfuscated his identity. The monograph is extremely rare: there is no copy in French institutions, OCLC records just 4 institutional holdings, 3 in Europe and 1 in the U.S. at Northwestern University. Because of this, the books with their engraved wooden boards and the monograph fell into obscurity: neither Schreiber, Hind, nor any other historian of early printing or xylography mention them. The whereabouts of the books are unknown until 1958 when the bookseller Emil Offenbacher sold them toCornelius Hauck for $2,500.

The better known of the two incunables is a Lyonnese edition of Rolewinck’s Fasciculus temporum, housed in its contemporary binding of quarter calf over beech-wood boards; a former owner, presumably La Plane, ‘enhanced’ the book with the addition of two xylographic white-on-black inscriptions, purportedly printer’s devices, one at the beginning of the book, the other serving as a colophon at the end. Most remarkably of all, the inside surfaces of the front and rear boards show elaborate inscriptions and illustrations, incised in relief on the wood by an unknown process (judging by the visible traces of residue remaining, likely chemical in nature). There can be no doubt that based on the physical evidence they are later manipulations almost certainly created by La Plane himself, and not evidence of a hither to unknown early 15th century xylographic reproduction process. The earlier incunable is Johannes Faber Runcinus’ Breviarium super Codicem (Lyon, Nicolaus Philippi Pistoris and Marcus Reinhart, 1480), this is a larger volume, again in its original contemporary binding, but in less good condition, both the wooden boards, while undoubtedly original, are detached, importantly, as with the Rolewinck, the inside surfaces of the two boards are incised with extensive inscriptions.

Full description available upon request.

Provenance: Antoine de Révilliasc (d.1542), ownership inscription dated 1535 in lower blank margin of a2r of the Breviarium; J. de Sigoin, early 18th century ownership inscription in the Breviarium. Like his ancestor of the same name, Joseph, was canon at the cathedral of Sisteron; Emil Offenbacher, bookseller; sold in 1958 to Hauck for $2500; Cornelius Hauck, heir to a brewing family; his sale, Christie’s New York, 2006.