Bookbinding

BOOKBINDING, the art of fastening sheets of paper (vellum, cloth, papyrus, etc.), together to make into portable form a written or printed treatise.

Bookbinding began in the Christian era with the change from the continuous roll or volume to the book made up of sepa rate sheets. Early books are composed of single sheets—of vellum at first, of paper later—folded once and collected into gatherings or sections of convenient size. The leaves were held to gether in the, section form by sewing through the central fold; the sections were held together in proper order by sewing them on to flexible bands or thongs at right angles to the backs. Later books only differ in that the section is usually a large single sheet folded several times so that the outer folds require cutting.

Origin of Bookbinding.

To keep the leaves flat and un injured, early books, which were large, were placed between thin wooden boards. Soon it was found as convenient as it was simple to join book and boards together, by fixing to the boards the ends of the bands holding together the sections. By the time a leather covering had been added to hide and protect the back of the sections, overlapping or completely covering the boards, all the elements of the modern book, half-bound or fully bound, had been evolved. A greater variety of materials is now used, but the principle of construction remains the same.

Early Decoration.

The covers of the bound book lent them selves readily to ornamentation and decoration. Already in the letters of St. Jerome reference is made to jewelled bindings, so that books were being sumptuously ornamented by the 4th cen tury of the Christian era. Costly bindings were often destroyed for their valuable materials ; but examples survive, mostly in churches and museums, of books covered or decorated with precious metals, enamels, jewels or carved ivory panels. The earliest is the 7th century Gospels of Theolinda at Monza in Northern Italy. Famous examples are the so-called Gospels of Charlemagne (Plate I.) in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Lon don, and the Lindau Gospels in the J. Pierpont Morgan collection, New York. Others exist in libraries such as the British Museum and the Bibliotheque Nationale.

These precious bindings are, and always were, unusual; they are mostly found on devotional books intended for royal per sonages or for the service of the church. The ordinary book, covered wholly or partly with leather over boards, was decorated with patterns of lines or stamps, or both. The earliest surviving decorated leather binding on a book, belonging to the same period as the earliest known precious binding, is on St. Cuthbert's Gospel-book (Plate III., fig. 1), taken from his coffin when it was transferred to the new Durham cathedral in 1104, and now pre served at Stonyhurst college. This is ornamented with repousse and painted line-work, and stands quite by itself. The other early decorated bindings are impressed with small stamps in blind (i.e., ungilt) in more or less elaborate patterns, and, apart from isolated examples, date from the century in which St. Cuthbert's Gospel-book was found. Fine examples of these bindings were made during that century at Winchester (Pl. III., fig. 2) and Dur ham, and later, at Oxford, Cambridge and London. Such bindings with small stamps, supplemented at the very end of the period by roll stamps, were the prevailing fashion in all the European coun tries from the 12th to the 15th century; but in the Germanic countries (Pl. II.), cut leather bindings also were produced by incising a pattern in the leather, the outline being sometimes emphasized by stippling the background.

With the introduction of printing into Europe about the mid dle of the 15th century the number of books produced suddenly increased enormously, involving a corresponding increase in the number of people employed in binding. The making and binding of books was transferred from the monasteries to the houses of printers and binders, and soon the names, initials or devices of printers or binders are found stamped on book-covers. Advances were made in the art of binding, styles of decoration developed and as books circulated freely, were copied in other countries.

Famous Styles.

About a quarter of a century after the in vention of printing, the greatest advance was made in artistic bookbinding in Europe by the introduction, probably through Venice, of gold-tooling from the East, where it had been prac tised much earlier. The art quickly developed in Italy, and spread to other countries. The celebrated Venetian printer, Aldus Manutius, was the first to give his name to a style in this new art ; but in general, the early styles are called not after their producers, who are unknown, but after famous collectors, or re puted collectors. "Canevari" bindings, which have in the centre a cameo stamp of Apollo driving a chariot, were so-called after their supposed collector Demetrio Canevari, physician to Pope Urban VIII. Their real collector has recently been shown to have been Pier Luigi Farnese, son of the succeeding Pope, Paul III. Many of the finest Italian and French bindings were made for Jean Grolier, viscount d'Aguisy, treasurer of France in and bear upon them the legend Portio mea domine sit in terra viventium and lo. Grolierii et Amicorum (Pl. III., fig. 4). Although not uniform in origin or appearance, these are known as Grolier or Grolieresque bindings. "Maioli" bindings are named after Thomas Maiolus, another famous collector of the period, who used similar inscriptions to Grolier's. Until quite recently he was considered to be an Italian, Tommaso Maioli, but he is now claimed to be a Frenchman, Thomas Mahieu, and identified with the secretary of Catherine de'Medici.

Italian gold-tooled bindings were imitated in other countries. In England, Thomas Berthelet, printer and binder to Henry VIII., was amongst the first to produce gold-tooled bindings "in the Venetian manner," while Thomas Wotton, as a collector, is an English counterpart to Grolier. In Germany, on the other hand, blind stamping, especially with panels on pigskin, continued in general use. In Italy itself fine bindings long continued to be made for great patrons like popes and cardinals, but recent in vestigations suggest that the supremacy in binding was passing to France earlier than is generally supposed. Grolier and Maioli bindings were produced in France under those patrons of the arts, Francis I. and Henry II. The royal printer and binder for the former, Geoffrey Tory, who also worked for Grolier, de signed a decoration for bindings made for his books (Pl. III. fig. 5 ) which includes his device of the pot casse. Fine bindings were made for Henry II., for his queen, Catherine de'Medici, and for his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, and from this time onwards French binders and families of binders have excelled in technical skill and initiative. Later royal binders, Nicholas and Clovis Eve, developed "fanfare" binding (Pl. III., fig. 6) usually associated with their name. Le Gascon in the early i 7th century developed the pointille style, where the dotted line replaces the solid line; and the Padeloup and Derome families of the late 17th and the i8th century developed the dentelle binding, so called from their lace-work borders.

In England, after Berthelet's time, fine bindings were made for royal and noble patrons, and usually decorated • with their arms or badges. Meantime velvet and embroidered bindings, common to most countries, increased in vogue and became espe cially popular during the Stuart period. In gold-tooled leather bindings a characteristic native style was not evolved until the late 17th century, when Samuel Mearne, royal binder to Charles II., devised the "cottage" design, so-called from its walls and its roof appearance. Along with the richly decorated binding of Mearne and his followers, the characteristic blind-tooled black leather binding, with dark, instead of gilt edges, became fashionable for religious books in England, for some half a century. English binding deteriorated during the i8th century, but it was redeemed towards the end of the century by a brilliant and original artist, Roger Payne, who with his fine small tools and original designs, with their proper appreciation of blank spaces, is the most inspiring of the English book binders. During his time John Edwards of Halifax worked on different lines; he was famous for his transparent vellum bindings cover ing delicate paintings, and, with John Whitaker, for "Etruscan" bindings, so called from their classical borders and other ornamen tations that were carried out in the classical tradition.

Modern Work.

The 19th century witnessed the development of decoration by machinery, whole covers being impressed in blind or gold by means of metal dies, a practice which was greatly extended with the introduction of machine-made cloth bindings. But these developments hardly affected high-class bindings. In France, from the beginning of the century onwards, binding and decoration have been more remarkable than ever for their tech nical perfection, at the hands of a long line of artists : Bozerian Thouvenin, Bauzonnet, Trautz, Lortic, Niedree, Duru, Cape, Chambolle, Cuzin, Michel and others.

In England the most original binder of last century was Charles Lewis (Thomas Grenville's binder), while others followed tradi tional styles, sometimes rather mechanically, notably Kalthoeber, Staggemeier, Walther, Hering, Bedford and the existing firms of Riviere and Zaehnsdorf. But towards the end of the century an artistic revival took place, inspired by William Morris, who was responsible for the modern revival in printing. The prac tical founder of the modern school was T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, who established the Doves Press and bindery; a series of his fine bindings is in the British Museum. His most successful pupil is Douglas Cockerell, whose increasing output, revealing originality, combined with a sense of the crafts historic back ground, confirms his position as the head of the bookbinders of to-day. Mention may also be made of Charles Ricketts, especially for his work on the Vale Press books (Plate IV., fig. 9) and of a recent convert to the decoration of bindings, Glyn W. Philpot, R.A. A number of women bookbinders, Miss Adams (Mrs. Webb), Miss E. M. MacColl, Miss Sarah Prideaux, Miss Sybil Pye, Miss Mary Robinson and others, have helped to increase the prestige of the modern English school, which has influenced the course of artistic binding on the Continent and in the United States. In France and Germany, and to a lesser extent elsewhere, besides work on sounder lines (see Plate IV.), there is an increas ing output of bindings which exceeds the true limits of book deco ration, partly under the influence of modernist tendencies in other branches of art. (See BooKs, Modern American; Boom, Modern English ; BOOK-PLATES.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.--S. T. Prideaux, Historical Sketch of Bookbinding Bibliography.--S. T. Prideaux, Historical Sketch of Bookbinding (1893) ; W. Y. Fletcher, Bookbindings in the British Museum (1895, 1896) ; C. J. Davenport, English Embroidered Bookbindings (1899) ; J. Loubier, Der Bucheinband in alter and never Zeit (19o4) ; T. Gottlieb, K. K. Hofbibliothek, Bucheinbiinde (1910) ; H. P. Horne, The Binding of Books (end ed., 1915) • G. D. Hobson, Maioli, Canevari, and others (1926) ; E. P. Goldschmidt, Gothic and Renais sance Bookbindings (1928). (H. THO.) A book is said to be bound when the sewing cords or tapes are firmly attached to the boards independently of the covering mate rial; books are said to be cased when the cover or case is made apart from the book. In English-speaking countries most books of any importance are issued cased in cloth and a .very small percentage . of these books are rebound. On the European con tinent where books are generally issued in paper wrappers bind ing for private customers is much more usual. While machinery of great complexity has been invented to cope with the casing of the immensely increased output of books resulting from the introduction of paper-making and printing machinery, hand bind ing is still done by methods and with simple appliances that have changed but little during 40o years.

Classes of Bookbinding.

The letterpress bookbinding trade is now divided into two main branches : publishers' or printers' binders who deal by machinery with the casing of large numbers of identical volumes; miscellaneous binders who deal with the binding of individual books with comparatively little help from machinery. The library binders who rebind books for the public and other libraries occupy a position between the two, while account-book or stationery binders form a trade apart, using rather different and generally sounder methods than those used by the letterpress binders.

The miscellaneous binder is called upon to deal with many classes of books ; books of value that require careful repair and strong protective covers ; memorial and ceremonial books that may have highly decorated bindings ; books for hard use that have to be bound strongly and cheaply ; books that merely need to be held together tidily for occasional reference ; memorandum and ms. books; diaries; etc.

For fine binding good leather is the best and most usual cover ing material as it has the quality of being readily moulded to the shape of the book while wet and by its toughness and flexi bility it strengthens the back without impeding the opening of the book.

blocks and are impressed with the aid of a press with a heated platten called a blocking press. When there are several books of one title to be lettered brass type is sometimes set up in a holder and a line impressed by one operation. Long straight lines are made with a wheel called a fillet ; a wider wheel called a roll, with a pattern engraved on the edge, enables endless bands of orna ment to be impressed easily and rapidly.

Leather bindings may be decorated by the impressions of the heated tools directly on the leather, leaving a "blind" impression, or after the leather has been prepared the tools may be struck through gold leaf, leaving the impression in gold. Gold tooling is the commonest and most characteristic method of ornamenting bindings and may be used by itself or in conjunction with blind tooling or with inlays of various-coloured leathers.

Gold-tooled patterns are designed by arranging the impressions of the tools in some orderly manner. The tools may consist of more or less complete designs in themselves (see fig. 3) or may consist of single leaves, flowers, dots, etc. Generally speaking, the more elementary the actual tools, the greater the freedom of the designer. Fig. 4 shows how a design may be formed by the use of elementary tools.

Construction.

The "spine" of a well-bound book should "throw up" when the book is opened, that is to say, the spine convex when the book is closed should become concave when it is open. The leather, if its full qualities are to be utilized, should be attached directly to the back of the sections. This results in a certain creasing of the leather when the book is opened, and this is sometimes objected to as it may injure the gold tooling.

This difficulty is got over by lin ing up the spine so that it can not alter its shape, but the result is that the book cannot open freely. An alternative is to make what is known as a hollow back, which allows the actual back to throw up independently of the leather. This method throws a great strain on the leather at the joints and in every large library many leather-bound books will be found with the "hollow" break ing away. In cloth-bound books a hollow back is necessary be cause the cloth cannot be moulded.to the shape of the back.

The raised bands on the back of a book are caused by the cords on which the book is sewn. If raised bands are shown on a hollow-backed binding they are false and have nothing to do with the construction.

Materials for Bindings.

Where a whole leather binding is too costly, a saving can be made by binding in half-leather. In a half-binding the back and comers only are covered by the leather and the sides are covered by cloth or paper. Library binders make very strong bindings by sewing books on tapes and securing the ends of these between "split" boards. The spines may be covered with leather that can be left fairly thick if a small interval is left between the boards and the joint so that the bend of the leather is not confined to a single line. Where leather is too expensive, books may be bound in a woven material. The best book cloths are known as buckrams, but any cloth with a strong woven basis will serve. The cheaper cloths used largely by publishers' binders consist of little but a weak muslin filled in with dressing and these have little strength.

Bookbinding leather is not now always a reliable material. The Royal Society of Arts appointed a committee to investigate the causes of the premature decay of bookbinding leather and a valuable report was issued. The chief cause of decay was found to be the use of sulphuric acid in the dye bath, and certain leather manufacturers now supply leather that they guarantee to be free from injurious acid. Some, but not all, of these guar anteed leathers have proved to be satisfactory for as long as they have been tested. On the whole, sumach tanned goat-skin (known as morocco) has been found to be the most generally satisfactory leather for binding books, although the skins of many other animals if properly prepared may be employed for this purpose.