Pinault, Pierre-Louis <br/><br/>
La Société des Bibliophiles françois et les manuscrits enluminés de 1889 à 1939 

 -  2025.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 7 
<br/><br/> The “Polytypie” technique of F.-I.-J. Hoffmann (1730-1796) was based on his secret recipe of a paste in which books-pages set in lead types were molded so that, once hardened, it could serve as a matrix for their replication, as and when needed for reprints, the management of which was thus financially better controlled. Hoffmann quickly suffered from his competitors’ corporations who protested the privilege he had obtained, as well as from the royal power, irritated by the pre-revolutionary pamphlets he printed for the entourage of the Duke of Orléans. So, his business was closed after only two years, in 1787. But he before had applied his system to illustrative and ornamental pictures: these Épreuves are the specimen of the vignettes he offered to his clients and colleagues. This article’s figures reproduce some of them, with the exception of figure 3, which shows a vignette by Louis-René Luce made up of an assembly of 8 or 10 pieces; this “combination” method had prevailed for typographic decorations since its invention by Luce in the 1730s, followed by the creative impulse of P.-S. Fournier le Jeune. But it was complex in use and relied on the expensive technique of engraving metal punches and matrix. Whereas Polytypie simply imprinted woodcuts, which were simpler and less expensive to produce. Despite the closure of Hoffmann’s Imprimerie Polytype, this system achieved rapid and universal success, notably through Erhan and Didot’s “Stéréotypie” (said to have been inspired by materials seized from Hoffmann). These Épreuves, of which only one other copy is known in public collection (Newberry Library, Chicago, OCLC 62162268), are therefore the very first example of vignettes “polytypées” – the vogue of which continued under this same term until the end of the 19th century. It allows us to witness the hesitance of industrial and artistic property, when artists and publishers resorted to plagiarism, without qualms, consecrating the images they started to accustom the public to.