BOOKBINDING. The history of bookbind ing is chiefly the history of the ornamentation of book-eovers. The mechanical work of sewing and covering a book, described below, might indeed be studied chronologically as regards the changes in the processes employed: but this is of little general interest. When strips of vellum were replaced by cords at the back of the book, though perhaps discoverable, is a less attractive ques tion than that as to the place and time when gold tooling was introduced. Thus in the Twelfth Century there appear in England the earliest stamped leather bindings, and for our present purpose this is the beginning of the history of the art. The workmen of that time were familiar with the arts of softening leather and then shap ing it into the most complicated forms. Under the name of cuir-bouilli, corrupted in England into quirboily and the like, the material was used for much of the war equipment of man and horse, as well as for decorative arts in peace. It was, therefore, easy to take the further step of draw ing the soft leather tight on a thin oak board, impressing upon it stamps most commonly of wood and engraved in relief. In this way de signs in the taste of the epoch, Romanesque or semi-Byzantine scrolls and conventional birds, are found stamped in leather. In the Thirteenth Century the design becomes more notably Gothic; in the Fourteenth Century the emblems of lions, flenrs-del•s, roses, castles, and all the other de vices of heraldry, divide the field with religious emblems. All this is in what is called `blind' tooling; that is to say, in patterns impressed but not colored nor gilded.
Gold tooling seems to have come into Eurere from the East, probably in the Fifteenth Century. The custom of coloring the impressed pattern seems to have been introduced about the same time. The art of inlaying was the natural result of this taste for colored patterns, and is prob ably of the Sixteenth Century. it was for many years chiefly confined to Italy, where it was used with the greatest freedom, the color patterns being partly in inlaid leather, partly in painting, and everywhere bordered and touched with gold.
According to tradition, oak boards were first abandoned in favor of paper by the workmen who covered the books of the famous printer Aldus of Venice, in the Sixteenth Century. Previous to this time even small books had their still covers a quarter of an inch thick, and often beveled to a sharp edge to disguise this disproportionate thickness. The 'half-binding' of the time was, then, that with leather hack, this cover extending not more than an inch over the oak boards, which were otherwise exposed with no decorative effect except the grain in the wood. The cheaper kind of full binding was of brown leather stamped sometimes with separate though not very small tools and with letters put on by separate type, so as to form inscriptions, and sometimes with larger stamps, as where a Christ bearing His Cross and a David with his harp are on the two fiats of a cover, dated 1963, each stamp measur ing 1% X inches; these and the inscriptions around being gilded in a singular way by a pro cess of lacquering, probably Oriental in its origin. Vellum, parchment, and white pigskin were used, replacing the brown leather, and these light colored materials were often covered all over with minnte patterns, in which apparently metal stamps were freely used.
Jean Grolier de Servieres was treasurer of Francis I.. King of France. and for him were pre pared bindings of great richness and beauty. It appears that the volumes of a library, large for its epoch, were bound for him in this sumptuous way, the characteristic ornamentation being in terlacing bands, dark, and edged with gold upon a lighter ground, or scrolls of gold lines only; the name of the book being lettered in the centre panel of one or both of the sides. and the familiar motto, Portio ?nca dominc in terra. riventium, alternating with or accompanying the phrase, to. a•olie•ii et amicorum "[the property] of John Grolier and his friends." The decoration and the friendly legend were both rather closely imitated by Alaioli, an Italian, of whom but little is known.