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Title: Modern bookbindings: Their design and decoration
Author: Prideaux, S. T.
Language: English
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MODERN BOOKBINDINGS
[Illustration: 1. BOUND BY ZAEHNSDORF.]
MODERN BOOKBINDINGS
THEIR DESIGN AND DECORATION
BY
S. T. PRIDEAUX
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
1906
Edinburgh: T. AND A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
CONTENTS
PAGE
MODERN ENGLISH BINDING 3
MODERN FRENCH BINDING 59
EDITION BINDING 105
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE
I. BOUND BY ZAEHNSDORF—_Frontispiece_
AT PAGE
II. „ „ 6
III. „ „ 6
IV. „ RIVIÈRE 10
V. „ „ 10
VI. „ MORRELL 14
VII. „ „ 16
VIII. „ „ 16
IX. „ DE COVERLY 18
X. „ FAZAKERLY 20
XI. „ „ 20
XII. „ CHIVERS 26
XIII. „ „ 26
XIV. „ THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 30
XV. „ „ „ 34
XVI. „ „ „ 34
XVII. „ THE GUILD OF HANDICRAFT 38
XVIII. „ DOUGLAS COCKERELL 40
XIX. „ „ „ 40
XX. „ F. SANGORSKI AND G. SUTCLIFFE 42
XXI. „ DE SAUTY 44
XXII. „ „ „ 44
XXIII. „ MISS ADAMS 46
XXIV. „ MISS MACCOLL 48
XXV. „ MISS ALICE PATTINSON 48
XXVI. „ MISS MAUDE NATHAN 50
XXVII. „ MISS WOOLRICH 52
XXVIII. „ MISS PHILPOT 54
XXIX. „ MARIUS MICHEL 60
XXX. „ „ „ 62
XXXI. „ „ „ 62
XXXII. „ LÉON GRUEL 64
XXXIII. „ „ „ 68
XXXIV. „ „ „ 68
XXXV. „ „ „ 72
XXXVI. „ „ „ 72
XXXVII. „ MERCIER 76
XXXVIII. „ „ 80
XXXIX. „ „ 82
XL. „ „ 84
XLI. „ „ 84
XLII. „ RUBAN 88
XLIII. „ „ 92
XLIV. „ „ 92
XLV. „ CARAYON 94
XLVI. „ „ 96
XLVII. „ „ 96
XLVIII. „ CHAMBOLLE 98
XLIX. „ „ 106
L. „ „ 106
LI. „ CANAPE 108
LII. „ „ 112
LIII. „ „ 116
LIV. „ „ 120
LV. „ „ 120
LVI. „ KIEFFER 124
LVII. „ „ 128
LVIII. „ „ 128
ERRATUM
_For_ “Revière” _read_ “Rivière” in List of Illustrations.
_For_ “Morell” _read_ “Morrell” throughout.
The address of the Oxford University Press is still Amen Corner, E.C.,
and _not_ St. Dunstan’s House, Fetter Lane, as stated on page 35.
MODERN ENGLISH BINDING
I
Within the last five-and-twenty years there has been a marked revival in
every department of applied art. The influence of William Morris, whose
efforts in all the accessories of house decoration were for some time
only recognized by the few, has now spread to all classes. No longer
confined to the houses of the rich or of those who profess the cult of
aesthetics, it is to be found with more or less of travesty in country
rectories and suburban villas, catered for by the enterprising tradesman
on the monthly hire system. To those who remember vividly the early
Victorian surroundings of the home and their prevailing ugliness, the
complete change which has taken place has hardly yet ceased to be a
source of wonder. Nothing remains the same: from wall-paper to coal-box,
from bedroom to kitchen, all has ‘suffered a sea change.’ In any
examination of the present condition of the artistic crafts and the
promise they present of future development on a sound basis, one cannot
fail to observe that the effort to promote taste has penetrated to the
commonest objects of daily use. The thought that finds expression in
decoration has gone to salt-cellars and buttons as well as to carpets,
cabinets and books. Some industries too, that may almost be said to have
died out for lack of appreciation, have been revived on new lines and
taken up by the public with enthusiastic approval. The use of enamel in
jewellery and in combination with wrought metal may be mentioned as an
instance of this, as well as the inlaying of cabinet work not only with
coloured woods, but with pewter, ivory and pearl. The spell of
convention once broken, the imagination of the craftsman has found
relief in flying to the furthest distance from models that were till
recently his only guide. This freedom, when restrained by genuine
artistic feeling, has given in many cases excellent results; but in the
majority of cases the sole achievement has been an eccentricity that
shows few signs of a realization of what is needed in applied art and of
the laws that should govern it.
In no sphere has there been a more striking departure from the hitherto
circumscribed lines of ornamentation than in everything that relates to
books and their decorative treatment. Paper and ink, type and its
massing on the page, illustration both as a part of the text and outside
it, the materials and enrichment of the cover—all have alike undergone
fundamental reconsideration. It is, however, with bindings and not with
the other features of book production that we are now concerned; and it
is proposed in these pages to draw attention to what is being done in
England and France in a field of work that has an increasing number of
recruits and a growing and interested public.
It is now more than twenty years since the movement spoken of began to
include bookbinding. During that time there has been noted the trade
opposition to Mr. Cobden-Sanderson when he started as an amateur,
followed by an imitation in many quarters, which, to say the least of
it, is not the most subtle form of flattery. There has been also the
later influence of Mr. Douglas Cockerell—a result of his strenuous craft
teaching as well as of the work of his own hands—and the tardy
acknowledgment of professional binders that the interest of the amateur
has been productive of good even from the narrow standpoint of their
class. Nor has France escaped this wave of innovation, though there
formalism had a stronger hold even than with us, inasmuch as the
traditions of what in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had really
been more of a fine art than a craft were rooted in the country with all
the firmness that national pride could give. Finally, one may mark the
growing enthusiasm of our American neighbours in the subject and their
efforts to create a national taste in fine bindings. They show a ready
acknowledgment of what is being done outside their own country, and a
willingness to recognize that work directed by the artistic rather than
the commercial spirit must be paid for according to a standard different
to that of the ordinary tradesman.
[Illustration: 2. BOUND BY ZAEHNSDORF.]
[Illustration: 3. BOUND BY ZAEHNSDORF.]
That an increasing number of people appreciate the problem of designing
book covers may be judged from the fact that of late years nearly every
illustrated paper has had an occasional article on one or another binder
anxious to attract the public to the originality of his work. Assuming
this appreciation, we will touch briefly on the craft in England before
its revitalization during the last quarter of a century, and then pass
in review those who are now occupied with its decorative side and who
are trying to remove it from the traditional grooves in which it lay for
so long. Unfortunately, many binders doing excellent and conscientious
work, on lines far more valuable than that of pattern making, must
remain unnoticed, for it is only work that is striving after an effect
of ornament that is capable of illustration. Of this, too, the amount
has so much increased of late that it is impossible to give examples of
much that equally deserves representation with what has been selected.
For a true understanding of modern effort it is necessary to realize
that the art history of binding is an important one, especially in Italy
and France; but in this very brief review of English binding before
1850, we need not start further back than the time when gilt tooling was
brought from France. Before that period the heavier covers had been
decorated with stamps often of a very beautiful kind and impressed upon
the leather without gold. But in the reign of Henry VIII., Thomas
Berthelet, the King’s printer, first executed gold-tooled bindings, the
designs on which were frankly adopted from those that prevailed in
Italy, the models, no doubt, being found among the large number of books
imported from abroad at that time. Later on, when Italian binding as a
fine art had been merged in that of France, the influence of the latter
country is seen, as, for example, in the books bound for Thomas Wotton
in imitation of Grolier, one of the most famous collectors of any age or
country. Throughout the reigns of the Stuarts, English binding continues
to show French influence, as a glance at the books exhibited to the
public in the British Museum will show to the most casual observer. Nor
had we a binder who can be said to have shown any tendency towards a
native style till the time of the Restoration, when Samuel Mearne,
bookbinder to the King, inaugurated what is known as the ‘cottage’ form
of decoration. Though the elaborate filigree work on his books reminds
one that Le Gascon exercised an important influence, the form of the
ornaments and their arrangement remain distinctly English. A development
of this style, equally native in character, may be found a little later,
during the first part of the eighteenth century, chiefly on the Bibles
and Prayer-Books of the time. In these there is a certain amount of
rough inlay, either in the form of a panel or in that of tulips and
other conventional flowers outlined in gold, though with a dotted
instead of a solid line. These ornaments, poor in themselves, which form
the main part of the decoration, are often combined with great skill and
sense of effect. An unusual number of such books were collected at the
time of the Exhibition of Bindings at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, and
were found both charming and effective notwithstanding a somewhat rough
and hasty workmanship. From the reign of James II. to the time of Roger
Payne there are no names associated with any bindings of importance; and
with the passing of the prevailing fashion of ornament on the books just
described, design reached its lowest point towards the end of the
century. Of Roger Payne, who effected a genuine revival of bookbinding
somewhere about 1770, it is not necessary to say much. His style is well
known to all book lovers, and the details of his eccentric life have
been so often recorded that the reader must be more than weary of them.
One point in connexion with his work is, however, I think, worth
mentioning, and that is that his style has never lent itself to that
modification in imitation which enables any artist to become the founder
of a school. Any one of the skilled binders will do you a ‘Roger Payne’
as he will do you a ‘Grolier’ or a ‘Le Gascon’; but it will be a
reproduction of the real Roger’s work, with the exact details and
precise arrangement of them that are to be found on his authentic
bindings. So that, notwithstanding his originality, he inspired no
following, though his imitators have been perhaps more numerous than
those of any other binder.
[Illustration: 4. BOUND BY RIVIÈRE.]
[Illustration: 5. BOUND BY RIVIÈRE.]
Charles Lewis and Frances Bedford, followed by Robert Rivière and Joseph
Zaehnsdorf, did much good work in the early part of the last century,
especially Bedford; but they can lay no claim to an originality which
disappeared with Payne, and which was not seen again until Mr.
Cobden-Sanderson attempted to do for the binding of books what William
Morris had already done for the other decorative arts. It is the result
of this revived interest in handicrafts and the attempted application to
binding of the more vital principles of art which it is proposed to
illustrate here. One must say attempted, because success by no means
always results. In this review, however, of modern binders, definite
criticism is not an object, though the difficulties attendant on their
efforts naturally come up for consideration and necessarily involve some
expression of opinion.
[Illustration: 6. BOUND BY MORRELL.]
Both Zaehnsdorf and Rivière left representatives to carry on their work,
the former a son, and the latter two nephews, Mr. Percy and Mr. Arthur
Calkin. From the small establishments in which both houses originated
there has developed in each case an important business in which an
exceedingly large number of books are bound for the export as well as
the retail trade. In a bindery of this nature there would not be time
for the serious consideration of artistic problems unless it contained
what Mr. Lethaby so aptly describes as ‘a “quality” department in a
“quantity” business.’ It remains as true now as it has always been that
the craftsman who is also an artist must work in his own way and at his
own speed—a fact well realized in the French workshops, which are
altogether outside the rush and pressure of commercial life. So in each
of these houses we find a certain number of the more intelligent and
skilful men employed only upon the best work, and engaged in carrying
out designs which they either make up themselves from certain recognised
types or which are made for them by more practised designers. This
introduces the question—which is a practical one for the large employer,
though it need not exist for those having a comparatively limited
output—whether it produces better results to keep a trained designer, or
to give the pattern making into the hands of the more artistically
disposed ‘finishers.’ Some consider that it is impossible, so long as
the education of the workman is so lamentably defective on the side of
taste as it is, to expect him to plan book covers above the ordinary
level of presents and school prizes; others hold that his feeling for
what is good and appropriate can only be cultivated by encouraging him
to the interest and responsibility of planning what he is going to
execute. Mr. Calkin has long kept a designer entirely occupied on the
decorated work that many of his clients demand. Other houses have tried
the practice of getting drawings made by the general decorative artist,
and have given it up in disgust at the unpractical character of the
results obtained. And it is true that it takes time and patience to
train one accustomed to a free hand in invention to a realization of the
limitations necessitated by the use of rigid stamps and the
comparatively small number of them that can be employed on a binding.[1]
Ask any professed pattern maker to make you a device for a book cover,
and you will get something which, though it may be satisfactory and
attractive in itself, will be either impossible of execution or give the
most disappointing results. Naturally, where any firm happens to possess
workmen of the required taste and ability, they should be encouraged to
the utmost to give effect to their sense of drawing in its application
to their own trade. Messrs. Morrell, whose large business is entirely a
wholesale one, supplies all the booksellers with bindings designed by
his men and remarkable for their variety and merit. It is too early to
speak of the influence of the technical schools upon the output of the
large workshops, but when one knows that the three houses above
mentioned employ some 200 men between them, it can easily be imagined
that the training of the workman is a serious consideration.[2] It is
customary now for binders to keep a record of their more special work,
and in this way the extent of their range can be noted by the employer
and undue repetition prevented. Another improvement on the past is that
designs are not now multiplied as they used to be—that is to say, in the
best class of work. A specially planned cover is not repeated or even
published without the owner’s consent; and this is a wise plan, for all
art, even the best, suffers by vain repetition, and a good and
appropriate pattern on a book will be but a weariness to the eye when it
is seen in multiplicity in booksellers’ windows.
[Illustration: 7. BOUND BY MORRELL.]
[Illustration: 8. BOUND BY MORRELL.]
The concluding illustrations in this chapter show work done by Mr. Roger
de Coverly and Mr. Harry Wood. Mr. de Coverly served his apprenticeship
to the elder Zaehnsdorf, and was afterwards employed for many years by
Messrs. Leighton. In 1863 he set up for himself, and his sound taste
being discovered by Mr. F. S. Ellis and Mr. William Morris, he soon got
the custom of many of those who were then seeking its application to
bindings. In 1883 he took one of his clients, Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, as a
pupil, and has had others since. He considers his speciality to be
vellum work; but unfortunately this does not show well in reproduction.
Mr. Wood was also with Zaehnsdorf, working for him as a finisher for
twelve years. He subsequently managed and in the end bought the business
of Mr. Kaufmann in Soho, which he has greatly expanded, and which is now
managed by his son. Neither he nor de Coverly have ever sought the heavy
expenses and responsibilities of a large undertaking, but have been
content with a personal business in which they themselves have always
taken an active part.
[Illustration: 9. BOUND BY DE COVERLY.]
II
Although the chief place to study bookbinders and their craft is
naturally London, there are several provincial centres where it
flourishes, and where it has been touched by that movement for
developing the artistic as well as the business side which we noticed in
the previous chapter. In large country towns it is impossible for work
to be as much specialized as it is in London; consequently a large
bindery will do business of a most miscellaneous kind, embracing
everything from pamphlets to fine-tooled morocco bindings, and including
albums, ledgers, library and school books for prizes. Mr. Fazakerly in
Liverpool, Mr. Birdsall in Northampton, and Mr. Chivers in Bath, all
have establishments more or less of this kind.
[Illustration: 10. BOUND BY FAZAKERLY.]
[Illustration: 11. BOUND BY FAZAKERLY.]
Mr. Fazakerly was one of the first binders, certainly outside of London,
who refused to support the excessive competition in cheapness, and who
struck out a department in which fine work could be executed at prices
that were remunerative and not prohibitive. Happily the result of his
efforts shows the success of a refusal to pander to that desire for
cutting prices which has done so much to ruin the crafts on their
artistic side. For some time after he had educated his workmen to the
responsibility of his new venture, he found that the taste of his
customers lay towards a reproduction of old models, but he has of late
been quite successful in directing it on to new lines. One feature may
be noted in connexion with the morocco work of Mr. Fazakerly, namely,
that the under cover is rarely decorated with the same design as the
upper. If the lower cover is left quite plain, the effect is poor, and
suggests that trouble has been spared on the book as a whole; but there
is no reason for the convention, almost universally adopted, whereby the
two sides are entirely alike. The same tools and elements of design
should appear in each cover, only disposed in different schemes of
ornament, and such variation naturally implies more thought, the thought
that avoids repetition. One of Mr. Fazakerly’s innovations was the
employment of embossed leather, which has since spread to many other
houses; and another which he considers a specialty of his business is
the decoration of the edges of books, both by means of tooling on them
or gauffering, as it is more generally called, and also by painting
underneath the gold. We may recall that in the sixteenth century this
extension of ornament to the leaves of a book was very prevalent, and
was only one of many indications that the workman spent ungrudging time
and thought on the details of what was intended to be a work of art
throughout.[3] Some very fine specimens of gauffered edges may be seen
on the works of Luther in seven folio volumes, dated Jena 1572–1581, now
in South Kensington Museum. The volumes being very thick offer fine
scope for ornament, which consists of the shield of Saxony painted in
the centre of each foredge, the rest of the space being filled with
arabesques and Renaissance ornaments. And there is, we believe, still in
this country part of the library that once belonged to Odonico Pillone
of Belluno, comprising some hundred and forty folios with foredges
painted by the hand of Cesare Vecellio, a nephew of Titian.[4]
The painting of edges was revived in England, and reappears in
thoroughly native style on books of the latter half of the eighteenth
century. Charming little English landscapes are to be found on some of
them, which, as the painting is done when the leaves are fanned out and
held in that expanded position, are not in evidence when the book is
shut, but when open appear at once. The name of William Edwards of
Halifax and his son James is especially associated with this work, and
their books are not very rare. Mr. Fazakerly has done a great deal of
this decoration, which requires certain conditions to ensure success.
The painter must be an artist, and the paper on which he works should be
rather thin than thick; the modern fashion of printing on a sort of
cardboard handicaps the binder not only in this, but other and far more
important ways. Mr. Fazakerly has also made some innovations in
‘doublures,’ a term applied to the inside face of the boards when lined
with leather or decorative material. In the matter of doublures the last
word has not been said, and there is still room for experiment. The
French custom of violent-coloured watered silks or equally salient
inlays has never found much favour in this country; but there has been a
great dearth both of invention and taste in dealing with this feature of
a binding. Some of Zaehnsdorf’s doublures have silk either of the same
colour as the cover, or in harmony with it, and he has tried Russia
leather with considerable success. Unsuitable as it is for the outside
cover from its tendency to rapid deterioration, it makes a very good
board lining, and can be employed as well for the flyleaf opposite;
indeed, it is better where possible that doublure and flyleaf should be
the same. It is with calf that Mr. Fazakerly has made his innovation,
and when delicately tinted and incised, but not embossed, the results
seem pleasant and appropriate. On books relating to Japan, the number of
which is largely on the increase, some of the coloured Japanese embossed
papers make excellent doublures. Before dismissing this subject, we may
mention the attempt of Mr. Bagguley, a binder at Newcastle-under-Lyme,
to tool on vellum in colour. Some of this work, designed by Léon Solon
and Miss Talbot, is very delicate and attractive; so delicate, in fact,
that it is only suitable for the inside of a book. His patterns are
composed chiefly of gouge and line work, as no effect of solid mass can
be apparently got in the colour, and the effect is enhanced by dots and
other small tools worked in gold. The excessively detailed nature of
this work, which is made up of ‘tools’ small and light in character,
heavier dies not being suitable for the stamping of colour, render it
costly of execution, but there is no doubt that its occasional use
offers a desirable variation on the ordinary inside lining. It is
difficult to close this subject without a few words in condemnation of
the coloured papers used by most binders for ordinary work which does
not admit of anything more elaborate. It is time they gave up the German
marbled patterns, the French ‘combs,’ and even the spirit marbles which
produce the effect of violent colour thrown on wet blotting-paper and
appear to be the latest fashion of monstrosity in such things. Good
white handmade papers or vellum papers are the most suitable, while if
coloured ones are deemed essential, the French and Van Gelder crayon
papers toning harmoniously with the morocco are not likely to be an
offence.
[Illustration: 12. BOUND BY CHIVERS.]
[Illustration: 13. BOUND BY CHIVERS.]
The business of Messrs. Birdsall at Northampton takes us to another
centre of provincial activity in binding, and it has an especial
interest in being one of the oldest bookbinding businesses in the
country. It has been in the hands of the present proprietors’ family
well over a hundred years, and has a connected history since 1757, when
John Lacy, a banker of Northampton, acquired it and associated with it a
bookselling business which he had also in the town. On giving up work in
1792 he sold both to William Birdsall, a Yorkshireman by birth, who had
settled there, and in this family it has remained ever since. We spoke
before of the varied nature of the work carried out by country binders,
and on Messrs. Birdsall’s premises we find a department of manufacturing
stationery, another for the wholesale paper trade, a third for
commercial bindings in which are included certain special registered
bindings patented for serial work, such as the ‘Stronghold’ and ‘Biblia
fortis,’ suitable for free libraries where the usage is rough and
constant, and lastly, one set apart for highly finished leather and
vellum books. The works are always kept in the highest state of
efficiency, and the workmen are encouraged to excel in skilled and
conscientious work. Many of these have passed a lifetime there, and
though the business is not of a co-operative character, a bonus is
distributed to the older and more efficient workers at the end of the
year.
[Illustration: 14. BOUND BY THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.]
Mr. Chivers, of Bath, has brought an unusual amount of originality and
enthusiasm into the service of his craft. His father was a binder there
before him, and the son, after working with Chatelain in London, decided
to settle in his native town. For some time his specialty was a binding
for public libraries patented under the name of ‘Duro-flexile,’ and
this, together with other library appliances, brought him a connexion
with librarians all over the country who were occupied with the problems
presented by the particular nature of their work. He has brought
considerable invention to bear upon these problems, and in certain cases
it is not likely that a more satisfactory solution will be found than
that which he has introduced. Besides these practical matters he has
made certain styles of decorating book covers especially his own, and
one of these he has developed with considerable success. This consists
in a scheme whereby designs are painted on paper and then covered with
transparent vellum, so that there is no limit to the colour effect that
may be produced. We have already mentioned James Edwards, of Halifax,
who settled in 1784 as a bookseller in Pall Mall, and whose love of
books caused him to direct his coffin to be made from the shelves of his
libraries. In 1785 he took out a patent ‘for embellishing books bound in
vellum and making drawings on the vellum which are not liable to be
defaced by destroying the vellum itself.’ The description further
contained in the patent has never been found possible of imitation,
which may or may not have been intentional on his part. The British
Museum shows a Prayer-Book bound by him in this style for Queen
Charlotte, wife of George III., which has likewise a foredge painting
beneath the gold. His patterns were frequently Etruscan in character;
but as his range of decoration was limited and the vellum he used
insufficiently transparent, his books are only of moderate interest. Mr.
Chivers’ plan is a much simpler one, and if the designs are given into
the hands of artists, very original results can be obtained. The French
have one binder—M. Carayon—who is famed for a class of book cover that
gives something of the same effect. The best-known painters both in
water colours and black and white are employed to decorate the white
vellum that clothes so sumptuously the finely illustrated books that his
countrymen admire so much. These will, however, stand no usage of any
kind, and can only be kept in cases carefully made for their protection.
The vellucent work of Mr. Chivers being beneath the vellum runs no risk
of deterioration and can stand even more than the usual wear and tear.
Sometimes it appears as if the colours chosen were too strong, producing
in some cases rather the effect of the highly coloured supplements that
appear at Christmas in our illustrated papers; but that, of course, is
not a criticism that belongs to the method, but is rather a counsel of
perfection for a more delicate application of that method. The desire
for colour has appeared constantly in the history of bookbinding. We see
it first in the Venetian books brilliantly painted in lacquer in the
Persian and Saracenic style taken from Arabian manuscripts, then in the
strapwork coloured with a varnished incrustation like enamel, the best
of which, French and Italian, is found about the middle of the sixteenth
century. This method has proved very perishable, and has never been
revived. Later on we get the inlaying of coloured leathers, which
reached its most interesting development in the eighteenth century, and
has retained its hold on public taste ever since. The earlier painted
strapwork was freely copied in mosaics of leather; and when we come to
deal with present-day French bindings, we shall see the new style of
inlaid decoration to which these have given place. The vellucent method
of Mr. Chivers is full of delightful possibilities if confined to books
to which it is suited, and when employed in a rather lower colour scheme
as suggested. Nor is it necessary for the whole cover to be of vellum,
for it is possible to introduce a panel only of the transparent material
over a picture, and to incorporate this in the morocco, giving the
effect of an enrichment of enamel.
Another style which Mr. Chivers has done much to popularise is calf,
embossed and incised and sometimes coloured by hand. In this, as for the
vellucent bindings, he draws freely upon outside talent. Mr. H.
Granville-Fenn is general artistic adviser, and Miss Alice Shepherd and
Mr. S. Poole have long been associated with him in the execution of this
work.[5] Some of the ‘cuir ciselé’ that has come down to us from the
past, and which originated in Germany, is very fine in character, as any
one can see who studies some excellent examples exposed in the British
Museum. There seems no reason why it should not have a satisfactory
revival; in France, indeed, this has already taken place, as we shall
see later on, but in England there is still too much ‘prettiness’
associated with it, and one is apt to think it more suitable for
card-cases and blotting-cases than for bindings. What results it can
yield when the design is severe and dignified and the treatment finely
chiselled may be observed on the _Pantheologia_ by Rainesius de Pisa, a
folio dated about 1475, one of the Museum books just mentioned.
[Illustration: 15. BOUND BY THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.]
[Illustration: 16. BOUND BY THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.]
The last illustrations in this chapter show work from the binding
department of the Oxford University Press. The Press itself, located in
special buildings in Oxford built in 1830, is divided into two parts,
one devoted chiefly to the printing of Bibles and Prayer-Books, the
other to classical, scientific and general printing. It is entirely
self-contained, making its own paper, ink, type, stereo- and
electro-plates. The University type foundry is the oldest in England,
and at the paper mills at Wolvercote, near Oxford, the famous India
paper is made which has brought very great changes into the book trade.
The publishing and binding house, lately at Amen Corner in the City, is
now at St. Dunstan’s House, Fetter Lane, and thither are sent all the
books from the Press as soon as printed. In the Paris Exhibition of 1900
the Press showed a considerable number of decorated bindings in addition
to the exhibits from the other departments. The Oxford Press designs are
very varied in character and include some excellent inlays; they are
made by the more artistic among the workmen, and speak highly for the
level of taste attained in the bindery.
[Illustration: 17. BOUND BY THE GUILD OF HANDICRAFT.]
III
In bringing forward what may be called the younger generation of
binders, it is natural to speak first of Mr. Cobden-Sanderson as the
source from which they have drawn much of their inspiration. His work,
however, is not represented here, as it would be discourteous to go
against his wishes in the matter. Whatever may be the reasons for his
change of attitude in this respect, he has in the past done a great deal
to introduce his work personally to the public and to explain his method
and ideals. The pages of the _British Bookmaker_, a trade journal no
longer in existence, the _English Illustrated Magazine_, the
_Fortnightly Review_, testify to his former willingness that his work
should be known and appreciated. He has also been one of the main
supporters of the Arts and Crafts Society since its inception in 1888,
and his books have been the largest contribution to binding in its
occasional exhibitions. There too, as well as at the Society of Arts and
elsewhere in London and the provinces, he has lectured on the craft,
setting forth what he conceives to be its purport both in the limited
matter of its processes and achievements and in the wider aspect of its
relation to the wants and progress of society. Not long ago he published
a book on _Industrial Ideals_, which it is interesting to compare with
the collected papers by Mr. William Morris which have appeared on that
and kindred subjects. Mr. Morris always held up the ideal of the Middle
Ages as the goal towards which to strive. It was a time, he considered,
when the processes or means by which life is lived constituted the end
of life itself, without seeking for some other end external to them and
often incompatible with them. This idea of ‘art being the highest
function of life’ was the gospel to which he never ceased to direct the
attention of his followers, and the next step—the attempted
re-organization of life into conditions that enable art to realize
itself—thus followed as a matter of course. As a protest against the
mechanical exploitation of the arts for the sake of commercial success
in its worst sense, and with the attendant evils of excessive
competition, such a creed is most valuable, and has already had an
important effect on the decorative arts which we trust may be permanent.
But it would seem mistaken in theory and impossible of practice to
attempt a reversion to mediaeval ideals with the wholly altered
conditions of production, distribution and mode of living that are now
part and parcel of modern life. A crusade against the existing
conditions in which works of art are produced must, one would think, if
its criticism is to be operative, find some way of including in its
scheme of regeneration the great movements of commercial life which is
one of the features of the age, and which even the most optimistic could
hardly hope to stem. Here and there an individual may achieve a career
somewhat in accordance with mediaeval ways, content with the limitations
imposed by this ideal; but except in such isolated instances it does not
seem possible to return to the practice of the past, when, as Mr.
Lethaby says, ‘the designer of a gold cup made it and sold it over the
counter, and the art was thrown in like a Christmas almanack.’ Here
comes in the problem mentioned in a previous chapter. If, on the one
hand, there is too much tendency for the designer to be occupied only in
planning ornament for others to execute with the result that a certain
inevitableness is nearly always wanting in the finished product, yet it
may be better for a skilled workman to carry out the views of an artist
rather than try and evolve variants from a few types set before him. In
the frequent advocacy of a revival of past conditions which would
benefit the workman, there is one point that seems always left
unnoticed—a point of great importance; and that is the stringent means
taken in those days to protect the purchaser also. In the scholarly
little introduction called ‘Art in the Netherlands’ which Mr. W. H.
James Weale contributed to the Catalogue of the picture exhibition held
at Bruges in 1902, he gives a concise account of the conditions under
which alone a man could become a painter in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries; and what held good for painting held good also for the minor
arts of life. As long as the craftsman belonged to the guild of his
craft, he was bound by its rules to carry out his work honestly and
conscientiously, to use good materials, and to beautify it as far as he
was able. The corporation arranged for the education of its members.
They were apprenticed to masters responsible both for their technical
efficiency and the fulfilment of their duties of citizenship. Each was
bound to the other; the apprentice was to give zeal in his service and
the master to impart all he knew of his trade. Once the apprenticeship
at an end, the youth could work, as what would now be known as an
‘improver,’ with any master he liked, and in any town that he chose.
Later on, in order to become a master, he had to present himself before
the heads of the guild and give proofs of efficiency, promise obedience
to the rules of the corporation, and swear to carry on his work well and
honestly. Observe, however, that, although a master, he remained all his
life under the control of the governing body of the corporation, the
members of which could enter his shop at any moment, seize his materials
if of inferior quality, confiscate them, and inflict punishment upon
him. Lastly, in disputes between himself and his clients the guild was
called in to decide between them. We can imagine no condition less in
touch with the schemes of modern and social democracy, which so often
deal exclusively with the needs of the worker and neglect those both of
the employer and the consumer.
[Illustration: 18. BOUND BY DOUGLAS COCKERELL.]
[Illustration: 19. BOUND BY DOUGLAS COCKERELL.]
[Illustration: 20. BOUND BY F. SANGORSKI AND G. SUTCLIFFE.]
In connexion with this topic, mention should be made of Mr. C. R.
Ashbee’s experiment with the Guild and School of Handicraft. It began
its existence at Essex House in East London, and, after fourteen years,
in May 1902, removed to Chipping Campden, a small Cotswold village where
the wool trade flourished during the Middle Ages and the silk trade in
the eighteenth century. The aim of the Guild is set forth in a little
pamphlet, distributed to visitors at the Dering Yard Gallery, 67A New
Bond Street, where the work of the school is annually exhibited. It need
only be said here that its object is to set a higher standard of
craftsmanship by liberating the workman from the restrictions of the
trade shop, and directing his independence away from purely
individualistic efforts on to lines of art service to the community, and
that it is conducted co-operatively, the men having an interest and a
share in the concern and its government. While recognizing the
importance of what a man does and the conditions under which he does it,
both to himself as a citizen and to the community for which he labours,
the Guild endeavours to strike a mean between the socialism that cares
only for the worker and the commercialism that disregards him and his
idealistic as well as material needs. The work carried out at Chipping
Campden is very various, and includes furniture, metal work, jewellery,
printing and binding. After Mr. Morris’s death, Mr. Ashbee acquired the
plant hitherto in use at the Kelmscott Press, and began a series of
books, first in a Caxton type and later from a fount of his own design.
Binding followed almost as a matter of course on these issues from the
Essex House Press; and in connexion with it, besides the ordinary
plain-tooled leather bindings, excellent in restrained ornament, he has
revived certain fifteenth-century styles for which he has a special
predilection, and which include the use of enamels and wooden boards,
the latter often carved in low relief. The bindings, though designed for
the most part by Mr. Ashbee, are carried out by Miss Power, who is in
the main responsible for them. These books raise again the question
whether such deviations from the ordinary paths are legitimate attempts
to enlarge the limitations of the binder’s art. The ultimate serviceable
use of a book should ever be kept in sight, and must in the end
determine the matter. Leather and vellum, tooled with a few fine stamps,
disposed with taste and restraint, will always remain the best coverings
for books, because they are unobtrusive and can be pleasantly handled
and easily disposed. Work that is embossed, enamelled, carved, or even
too decorative in colour for unlimited production, can only be desired
as occasional specimens of interest in themselves, and as exceptions
proving the rule.
[Illustration: 21. BOUND BY DE SAUTY.]
[Illustration: 22. BOUND BY DE SAUTY.]
Mr. Douglas Cockerell, a pupil of Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, has written the
first of a new series of technical handbooks on the artistic crafts
which is a model of the kind and should prove the text-book for all
future binders. It is, no doubt, the outcome of some years’ teaching at
the County Council School in Regent Street, where, for many years, he
did excellent work in training the younger men to an intelligent
interest in the various processes of their craft. No craft can be well
learned anywhere but in a practical workshop; and he considers the value
of class teaching to be limited to helping those engaged in a trade, and
that such help is of great value in giving higher ideals and encouraging
experimental work. From the beginning Mr. Cockerell has been specially
interested in the repairing of books and in the preservation of old
covers, and has given his pupils some training in all that relates to
the care of books. There are numbers of old bindings that after four
hundred years of wear and tear are still capable of fulfilling their
original purpose of protection, with a little help from modern hands. To
give a new lease of life to fine old books is really of far greater
importance than the continual production of new and pretty bindings. Mr.
Cockerell’s original work is well known both here and in America, and
there is luckily a great deal of it that is simple as well as highly
decorated. It is comparatively easy to do the latter; but a plain
binding that yet has the stamp of the maker’s individuality is a very
exceptional achievement, and in work of that character Mr. Cockerell is
unsurpassed.
[Illustration: 23. BOUND BY MISS ADAMS.]
Mr. F. Sangorski and Mr. G. Sutcliffe, who were formerly with Mr.
Cockerell, have started a bindery of their own, and are engaged both in
teaching and doing varied work of a pleasant character. Trained in the
methods of Mr. Cockerell at the Technical School at 316 Regent Street,
Mr. Sutcliffe now controls the teaching for the County Council at its
branch establishment in Camberwell, and Mr. Sangorski that of the
Northampton Institute in Clerkenwell.
Mr. de Sauty is another young binder, and his work is of considerable
merit. His inlays are distinguished for the taste shown in the
association of colours, and his finishing has some of the brilliant
qualities of the French school, seen particularly in the finely studded
tooling of which he seems particularly fond. He has now the post
formerly held by Mr. Cockerell.
[Illustration: 24. BOUND BY MISS MACCOLL.]
[Illustration: 25. BOUND BY MISS ALICE PATTINSON.]
In concluding this sketch of Bookbinding in England as it appears
to-day, we must not omit to speak of the entrance recently effected by
women in many of the handicrafts, and notably in the one under
consideration. Quite a number are now trying to make a livelihood out of
bookbinding; and possibly, therefore, a few words less of criticism than
of counsel may not come amiss. It may be said that there are certain
conditions absolutely necessary for successful achievement, quite apart
from financial gain, which is another matter. The first of these is a
workshop training, which, though impossible some years ago, is now no
longer so within certain limits; that is to say, there are one or two
binders with small workshops who undertake to give women systematic
teaching for a limited time. In a workshop they will see a variety of
work that they will miss if taught privately, and they will learn the
habit of rapid and dexterous manipulation of tools and materials without
which it is impossible to work quickly enough for a profitable return
upon the outlay. A second most necessary qualification is that they
should have the physique for standing and working at a bench during the
hours of an ordinary working day. For binding is not like other less
specialized crafts that can be taken up at odd hours and laid aside with
equal facility, but needs concentration of mind as well as sureness of
hand. A third element in the desirable equipment is a certain faculty of
imagination controlled by right feeling or good taste, so that the
results of workmanship have the note of individuality without
eccentricity. In art as in life, personality is the one thing needful,
and we may fairly look to women to show the realization of it that can
hardly be expected from those working in the stereotyped grooves of
production.
[Illustration: 26. BOUND BY MISS MAUDE NATHAN.]
And what is to be said of binding as a means of livelihood? Experience
has shown that properly trained women can do as good binding as men,
though not upon large and heavy work, and if they do it well enough some
of them can earn a fair wage, while if they fail to reach a high
standard they had better for all practical purposes let it alone. But to
hold out any inducement to the woman who really needs bread-and-butter
to take up binding as a lucrative employment, as is done in some
quarters, should be characterized with the severity it deserves. Many
women need but an addition to their income, and to such, if they are
willing to incur the expense of training and plant, and if they realize
the experimental nature of the undertaking, binding may be recommended
as a sufficiently pleasant occupation. Whether financial success comes,
however, or not, must depend upon the amount of work turned out, on the
originality and finish with which it is executed, and last, but not
least in importance, on the finding of a market. Booksellers are now so
overstocked with so-called artistic bindings of moderate merit, and it
may also be said of moderate price, that they are not eager to accept
those of average quality at the more than average price that many women
expect their work to command. A market can always be found for the best
of everything; but as far as bindings are concerned it is certainly at
present overstocked with the second best, and attention may well be
directed to other branches of decorative work. There are more than
enough half-trained workers, both male and female; and it would be a
most undesirable result of what in itself is so eminently desirable—the
opening of the artistic crafts to women—if there were to be a great deal
of inferior work put into circulation obviously from the hands of those
who have never left the amateur stage. Women make a mistake, too, in
specializing in the production of decorated bindings. It is no doubt a
right principle to take the everyday things of life and decorate them
rather than invent useless ones for the purpose. It has, however, this
disadvantage, that it has now become almost impossible to get any of
these homely things made with the severe simplicity of mere
purposefulness. If one does not want the useless things, at least one
need not buy them; but it seems hard that the necessary ones should
become the _corpora vile_ on which the professed decorator exercises his
too frequently disordered imagination. One is unfortunately as little
likely nowadays to find a plain pepper-pot as one is to find a bound
book on which there is not some flower sprawling over its cover in a
meaningless attempt to be Japanese in sentiment. We want to get rid of
the affectation of contorted pattern and have more of the plain things
of life plainly made. As far as bindings are concerned, in addition to
this much-desired simplicity, there is, as has been said above, far more
important and useful work to be done than pattern making, in the
repairing and preserving of old books and records. An instance of this
may be seen at the present moment in an extensive matter undertaken by
Mr. Cockerell for the Middlesex County Council. A large number of their
ancient Sessions Books, many of them crumbling to pieces, are being put
in a condition for reference, the whole business of mending being done
by women under the direction formerly of Miss Wilkinson and now of Miss
M‘Ewan both pupils of Mr. Cockerell. Again, many more women might
adventure starting a business in the country or in a provincial town. In
America there is hardly a centre where there is any interest shown in
books which has not a woman binder who has probably been trained by Mr.
Cobden-Sanderson. We are glad to notice that Miss Adams has a bindery at
Broadway, that Miss Paget is at Farnham doing good honest work of a
comparatively simple nature, and that Miss Philpot has established
herself at Cambridge. Space forbids more than a few illustrations from
the work of women binders, numerous as they now are. Miss MacColl’s
books have for some time excited interest both on account of the
character of her brother’s designs and her manner of executing them by
means of a small wheel, which is an attempt to overcome the restrictions
of the finisher’s ordinary methods. Miss Nathan, Miss Pattinson and Miss
Stebbing are all doing well-considered and tasteful work on sound
principles. Of those at work in Scotland we need only mention the names
of Miss Jessie King, Miss McClure and Miss Jane F. Hamilton, Miss Alice
Gairdner and Miss Agnes Watson of Glasgow, as their work has recently
been specially dealt with in a paper by Mr. Lewis F. Day.
[Illustration: 27. BOUND BY MISS WOOLRICH.]
[Illustration: 28. BOUND BY MISS PHILPOT.]
In conclusion, it is necessary to keep in mind that binding is but one
of the sub-crafts that contribute to the production of books. Of late
each of these has pursued its own often faulty ideals regardless of its
relationship to the other contributory crafts. The paper-maker, the
printer and the binder would be more likely to work intelligently if
they had some mutual knowledge of each other’s needs and limitations.
The habit has been growing for some time of looking on the binding of a
book as the most important thing in connexion with it. But the binder of
the future, if his work is to be an effective contribution to decorative
art, must look on the book itself as the unit of interest, the thought,
embodied in typography and illustration, constituting a whole to which
in the decorated cover he adds, not an essential part, but as it were
the crown or coping-stone.
[Illustration: 29. BOUND BY MARIUS MICHEL.]
MODERN FRENCH BINDING
I
In the spring of 1902 there took place in Paris the first of the
exhibitions to which the new Galliera Museum is henceforth to be
devoted. This Gallery, still unknown to a considerable number of English
visitors, was built by Ginain in the style of the French Renaissance,
and is all that a small museum should be. Its history is briefly as
follows. In 1878, the Duchesse de Galliera presented to the City of
Paris a plot of ground situated in the Rue Pierre-Charron by the
Trocadero avenue, and undertook to erect upon it a suitable building in
which to house the collection of works of art that she proposed leaving
to the nation. Before, however, it was finished, and in consequence of
the political events that resulted in the expulsion of the heads of
princely houses from France, the Duchess had made a will in which she
left her pictures to her native town of Genoa, only making provision for
the completion of the Gallery. She died in 1888, and soon afterwards
Paris found herself in possession of this fine museum, surrounded with
gardens, and admirably appointed in the architectural detail so well
understood by the French, but empty of all the treasures it was to have
housed. What was to become of it? The municipal council decided that it
should be devoted to industrial art, forming a sort of supplement to the
Carnavalet Museum, and the necessary furnishing was undertaken with a
view to that end. It was formally opened in 1895, but for five years
after that remained practically empty, though purchases were made from
successive Salons of different kinds of decorative art and disposed
among the vacant rooms to form a nucleus for future acquisitions. In
1900 the Council, after much deliberation, decided that the museum
should be devoted to periodical industrial exhibitions, and the first
one, of a miscellaneous character, took place in the following year. Its
distinctive feature consisted in what was an entirely new departure for
France, namely, that every craftsman signed his work instead of being
represented only in the name of the firm which employed him. This idea,
to which we have now long been accustomed through the efforts of the
Arts and Crafts Society, was a very novel one for our neighbours, and is
to be adopted henceforth in all the Galliera exhibitions. The initiative
met with such undoubted success that the Germans proceeded at once to
start a museum at Mulhouse on similar lines. The organizing jury of the
Council, which includes the foremost men of letters, artists and
critics, next decided that the yearly exhibitions should each be devoted
to a special branch of decorative art. The first of these was
inaugurated in May 1892, in an admirably planned show of modern bindings
comprising the latest developments, and, it must be added,
eccentricities of ornamental book covers. The number sent in
necessitated the largest gallery being set aside for their reception,
and was a testimony to the confidence felt by the binders that merit
would be the sole criterion. And indeed, though much interesting work
was rejected, not only were the well-known artists well represented,
such as Michel, Mercier, Gruel, Ruban, Canape, Lortic, Carayon, etc.,
but room was found for the curious vellum covers of Pierre Roche and the
incised and modelled leather of Lepère with whom Michel and others so
happily collaborate. The impression made upon the visitor was at once
one of careful selection and admirable disposition. In contrast to the
wretched instalment offered by the great Exhibition of 1900, the work of
every binder was seen to the best advantage, the eye was not fatigued by
too many show-cases, and the harmony of surroundings left nothing to be
desired. The display of works of art is in itself a study, and we could
undoubtedly learn much from the French in the excellent arrangement of
their galleries. But what a strange transition from that great room in
the Bibliothèque Nationale, where rest at last the classic specimens of
work that may without exaggeration be included among the fine arts, to
this most modern of collections! When in the Bibliothèque Nationale we
are reminded of that exquisite sonnet of Hérédia—
[Illustration: 30. BOUND BY MARIUS MICHEL.]
[Illustration: 31. BOUND BY MARIUS MICHEL.]
VÉLIN DORÉ
Vieux maître relieur, l’or que tu ciselas
Au dos du livre et dans l’épaisseur de la tranche
N’a plus, malgré les fers poussés d’une main franche
La rutilante ardeur de ses premiers éclats.
Les chiffres enlacés que liait l’entrelacs
S’effacent chaque jour de la peau fine et blanche;
A peine si mes yeux peuvent suivre la branche
De lierre que tu fis serpenter sur les plats.
Mais cet ivoire souple et presque diaphane,
Marguerite, Marie, ou peut-être Diane,
De leurs doigts amoureux l’ont jadis caressé;
Et ce vélin pâli que dora Clovis Éve
Évoque, je ne sais par quel charme passé,
L’âme de leur parfum et l’ombre de leur rêve.
[Illustration: 32. BOUND BY LÉON GRUEL.]
Here in the Galliera we realize how complete is the revolution now
finally effected by a people who clung long and faithfully to the
traditions of a style made famous by Grolier and by the Eves, Le Gascon
and Derôme. All through the nineteenth century these traditions were
adhered to, carried out by Thouvenin, Simier and Capé, by Chambolle,
Duru, Trautz and Cuzin, the inspired copyists of the great masters.
These looked on originality as the most dangerous of innovations and a
sort of disloyalty to the precedents handed down to them across the
ages. Nevertheless the impending change was slowly and surely making
way, fostered by Lortic and Marius Michel, the latter through his
writings as well as in his work. Henri Marius Michel followed in his
father’s steps: his essay on _L’ornamentation des reliures modernes_
showed clearly the direction taken by the modern school; while the
sumptuous book, _La reliure du XIX siècle_, by Henri Béraldi, who is
both a patron and collector of distinction, may be said to have given
final expression to the movement as a whole. Bookbinding, in common with
larger subjects, has its bibliography. A glance over the names of the
books that relate to it published during the last half-century shows
well enough how interest has been displaced from the historic schools to
those which have initiated entirely new forms of decoration as applied
to book covers. If, then, we are struck by the contrast between past and
present as regards the nature of this application of art to bindings, we
are equally impressed by the contrast between the position of the binder
then and now. It is no wonder that the small world of binders and their
patrons in Paris were proud of the position of honour assigned to their
craft in 1902. They inaugurated a series of exhibitions, which is to
include ivories, lace, jewellery, furniture—every art, in fact, to which
there attaches the personality that can only come from having at some
time had as its exponents ‘the masters of those who know.’ Even so late
as 1870 the name of Trautz was unknown, not only to the ordinary public,
but to such collectors as Eugène Paillet and Quentin Bauchart, though he
had been producing admirable work for thirty years. In 1878 he was
decorated with the Legion of Honour, the first time that any such
distinction had been offered to a binder. It was only after his
retirement and subsequent return to business at the age of sixty that
his fame grew till it culminated in a sort of worship that is
inconceivable outside of France. Nowadays the many means of publicity
would render such a state of things quite impossible. It is an age in
which every one longs to see himself reflected in print or show-case;
and if the workman in any line does not himself take measures for
bringing his efforts to the light, there is a class whose chief
occupation it is to be the discoverers of hidden talent, and to act as
middlemen between the producer and the public. In Paris, binders have
now a status that is looked upon with surprise and envy in England. They
are still, it is true, mostly congregated on the left bank of the Seine,
the quarter which was formerly in the parish of Saint-André-des-Arts,
and where their guild had its church of that name, now no longer in
existence. Up to five-and-twenty years ago there was hardly one that
lived elsewhere, and even now it is the exception to find a binder in
the more fashionable quarter. One has to climb high to reach their
ateliers, invariably of very modest dimensions and where but few workmen
are employed. The extensive businesses that we know in London hardly
exist in Paris, and M. Gruel’s is probably the only one employing a
large number of hands. For the most part two or three ‘forwarders’ and
the same number of ‘finishers’ will suffice for the yearly output of a
single workshop. But to these ateliers go personally the great
collectors who are wealthy patrons, to discuss in detail different
points of design and technique with a connoisseurship that is reserved
with us for painting or sculpture. To the unstinted help and intelligent
appreciation afforded by such a class of amateurs is undoubtedly due the
superior position of the artistic crafts in France. Many of the bindings
in the Galliera were achieved at a cost of two thousand francs, and
others for three and even four thousand. There are two papers entirely
devoted to the craft—_La Reliure_, which is the organ of the Chambre
Syndicale, an association of master binders founded by M. Gruel; and _Le
Relieur_, organ of the Chambre Syndicale Ouvrière, which is the
corresponding association for workmen. Every year binders can exhibit at
each of the rival Salons, at the Société des Artistes Français and the
Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and the Galliera Exhibition is but the
latest and most effective of the special exhibitions organized from time
to time for the exclusive display of their work. There is a desire to
make such exhibitions recurrent every ten years, so as to get a periodic
outlook on the art as a whole; but it is unlikely that the next few
decades will show such marked characteristics of difference as may be
seen by comparison of this collection with that even of 1892 organized
by the Cercle de la Librairie. It may, in fact, be suggested that the
evolution—or revolution, according to the point of view taken—now at its
height, will probably produce a reaction towards that greater sobriety
of treatment which distinguished the best work of the past. There are,
indeed, already signs that the future of binding will not lie in that
emancipation from all restrictions of form and material which would seem
to be the ideal of some. Precisely what that future will be rests
largely, no doubt, with the collectors, who are, as has been indicated,
a powerful body in France, largely on the increase. It is they who, like
MM. Béraldi, Spencer, Bordes, Villebœuf, Roger, Marx, Claude Lafontaine,
Baron de Claye, Louis Barthou, and many others, not only furnish binders
with the means of giving full play to their imagination, but often
devote their pens with enthusiasm to introducing new efforts to the
numerous body of amateurs who look to them for guidance in matters of
taste and are ready enough to follow their initiative.
[Illustration: 33. BOUND BY LÉON GRUEL.]
[Illustration: 34. BOUND BY LÉON GRUEL.]
The modern movement in binding may be said to have sprung out of the new
form of book-collecting which began about 1870. Up to that time the book
lover had confined himself entirely to eighteenth-century literature.
For forty or fifty years there had been a mad rush in the salerooms for
books of that period, which were then confided to Thouvenin, Simier, or
Trautz, who had exercised their skill in marvellous imitations of the
past, with an execution often more technically perfect than the
originals. There came a time, however, when such works were
exhausted—already stored away, that is to say, on the shelves of
collectors, the few that occasionally appeared on the market being only
to be had at prohibitive prices. Book-buyers were thus faced with the
problem of what was to be their next move. Obviously to create a new
taste in books and establish a fresh motive for collecting was a
necessity, and a few pioneers decided to set the fashion in illustrated
books of the nineteenth century. Léon Conquet, whose reputation as a
publisher is associated with the production of many fine works, at once
rose to the occasion, and made a name first with his editions of the
romantics of the nineteenth century, and then with original editions of
contemporary authors. Clients for whom the old tastes had become too
rare and costly an indulgence were thus provided with the means of
gratifying a new enthusiasm.
[Illustration: 35. BOUND BY LÉON GRUEL.]
[Illustration: 36. BOUND BY LÉON GRUEL.]
In 1874 an association sprang up of about fifty-five collectors who
called themselves ‘Les amis des livres,’ from which sprang the new
departure which has had far-reaching results in book production. The
members determined that henceforth, instead of reprints from the past,
there should be books specially illustrated and specially produced in
small editions for the society, thus reviving the traditions of the days
of Grolier and De Thou, when book collectors were also book makers in
the best sense of the word. Authors and artists were to collaborate with
printers and publishers to produce the perfect work. In this way came
into existence _Eugénie Grandet_ with the drawings of Dagnan engraved by
Le Rat, _Monsieur, Madame et Bébé_, illustrated by Edmond Morin and many
another, to which Meissonier, Vierge and Lepère devoted their best
efforts. Illustrated books have always presented a special attraction
for our neighbours, and this new stimulus gave the most surprising
results. Out of it arose, too, all the excessive preoccupation with
‘states,’ ‘papier de chine,’ ‘papier de japon,’ and the like which has
been carried to a ridiculous extent. The cult of rarity in all such
matters surely reached its highest point when single copies were
specially illustrated for individual collectors, such as the _Fleurs du
Mal_, which Paul Gallimond had ornamented with marginal notes by Rodin,
and _Les Trois Mousquetaires_ with water-colour sketches by Maurice
Leloir. The original drawings for _Notre Dame de Paris_ by Luc Olivier
Merson were bought for 20,000 francs in the open market, while those for
_Les Trois Mousquetaires_ and _Manon Lescaut_ by Maurice Leloir fetched
the extravagant price of 60,000 francs apiece. These facts are
interesting as showing how a small number of genuine book lovers and
collectors can constitute a real power, and so far control the character
of the book market that they create a new taste which will be recorded
in history as the fashion of the age in which they lived. The success of
the ‘Société des amis des livres’ and the response of the editors such
as Conquet, Quantin, Testaud, and others, to their initiation, gave such
encouragement to amateurs that two new clubs were soon formed, ‘Les amis
des livres de Lyon’ and ‘Les bibliophiles contemporains.’ The last was
founded by Octave Uzanne with a membership of 160, and ceased to exist
only to be re-established as the ‘Société des cent bibliophiles,’
presided over by M. Eugène Roderigues. Besides all these associations
there grew up a class of literature entirely devoted to the instruction
of the amateur and the development of his taste in all matters relating
to books and their bindings. The earlier literature of binding had been
devoted to reproductions of fine specimens from historic collections,
but now there appeared in profusion such books as _L’art d’aimer les
livres et de les connaître_, _Connaissances nécessaires à un
bibliophile_, _Les livres modernes qu’il convient d’acquérir_, _De la
reliure, examples à imiter ou à rejeter_, not to mention monthly reviews
such as _Le Livre Moderne_, _L’Art et l’Idée_, _Le Livre et l’Image_,
and the like.
Grolier took the best books he could find, and put them into the best
bindings he could find, and the motto of the collectors of to-day was
henceforth to be, as M. Béraldi says in the work previously mentioned,
‘le livre de son temps dans la reliure originale de son temps.’ Thus out
of the new bibliomania grew naturally the reaction in binding with which
we are now dealing, and the latest expression of which was seen in the
Galliera Museum. These books of fine illustrations must have an
appropriate decoration; nothing will do that has served its turn
elsewhere, and every amateur stipulates that his binding shall be
unique. ‘Doublures,’ formerly the exception, are now the rule; ‘tools’
are cut freely for fresh designs, and expense increases with the
initiative demanded of the binder, till there seems no limit to what
will be paid by the enthusiast. With the craving for novelty there
naturally arises the problem, so difficult of solution, concerning the
limitations of material and how far audacity may be risked in decoration
without extravagance or eccentricity. Cuzin, at the height of his
reputation in 1885, was possibly the first to leave the grooves of
tradition and to create a style that he considered appropriate to the
books of the time. It consisted for the most part on the outer covers of
what the French call _jeu de filets_, or line patterns which are capable
of much diversity, while wreaths of flowers inside took the place of the
lace patterns that had hitherto formed the ornament of ‘doublures.’ He
also adopted emblematic designs, but these were exceedingly moderate in
their symbolism. Marius Michel, too, devoted himself to the research for
fresh motives of decoration. In 1889, when eighteen years of age, he had
gone into Gruel’s atelier and rapidly became a gilder of consummate
taste and skill. Ten years later he set up for himself as a finisher,
working for Duru, Capé, Chambolle, Cuzin and other binders. For the next
twenty years or more his fine talent was devoted to the reproduction of
bindings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to perfect copies
of Grolier, Le Gascon and others put upon the books of that time, which
were still to be bought freely and at moderate price. Some of his best
work is to be seen now in the library at Chantilly; for the late Duc
d’Aumale during his exile intrusted large numbers of books to Capé,
always accompanied with detailed instructions, and it is these which
constitute a large part of the elder Marius Michel’s title to fame.
[Illustration: 37. BOUND BY MERCIER.]
II
In 1866 Henri Marius Michel, though only twenty years of age, had taken
an important position in the business, maintaining the traditions of his
father with equal zest and talent; and ten years later the atelier
became one for binding in all its branches, a change which enabled Henri
to develop his instincts for originality, the firstfruits of which were
seen in the incised and modelled leather covers exhibited by him at
L’Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs in 1881. But it was the days of the
Trautz mania; and no collector would hear of any binder but Trautz. All
the old books must be broken up to be recovered by him, and even
bindings by Bozérian were destroyed to be replaced by those of Trautz.
Notwithstanding his enormous output, the workshop was filled with books
which he kept years without touching, and prices continued to increase
until the Lacarelle sale in 1888, when there were signs of a change. In
one auction-room there were 420 Trautz bindings, in another 380; in the
library of James de Rothschild there were 2800 items, of which 1400 were
in nineteenth-century binding, a thousand of these latter being bound by
Trautz. But time brings its revenges; the place of Trautz is possibly
now as much below his deserts as it was then above, while Henri Marius
Michel, whose gifts of invention were long ignored as revolutionary, is
now at the height of his reputation. M. Béraldi calls him the finest
binder since the Renaissance, and there are those who say that the
idolatry of Trautz has given place to another and no less extravagant
form of hero worship.
Unceasingly occupied with decoration, he gave up the practice of gilding
with his own hand, but has continued to execute the Cuir Ciselé, which
is one of the styles in which he first achieved success and in which he
is undoubtedly past master. Another style that has been associated with
his name since 1885 is that known as _le flore stylisé_, in which flower
motives are very slightly conventionalized, but with a certain
individuality that makes his work unmistakable, notwithstanding the
number of his imitators. Modern French designs of this type are not
nearly enough conventionalized for our English taste, where a frankly
realistic treatment of natural growths has always been considered
unsound.
[Illustration: 38. BOUND BY MERCIER.]
With the death of Trautz and the rise of the new book-collecting had
come the moment for a revolution in binding, and Henri Marius Michel was
quickly followed by others. He had, in fact, set the ball rolling, and
broken with the long-kept traditions of symmetry, only to let loose a
flood of eccentric work for which there was little to be said, and which
often had not even the saving grace of technique. He at once became
reactionary, and there was a period during which he returned to repeated
patterns, simple line borders and the ordinary corner and centre
ornaments, rendered with faultless execution. But Marius might turn
reactionary for a time; the craze for _l’art nouveau_, as it was termed,
was not to be lightly checked. Everything was now pressed into the
service for the mere sake of novelty—leather, wood-carving, bronzes,
ivories, enamels, miniatures, all found a place until a binding looked
like any but what it should be, namely, a thing to be pleasant in the
hand and intended to protect a book, without needing protection for
itself. Curiosity shops were ransacked for silks and satins as
board-linings. Japan yielded its papers and its embossed leathers,
flowers of exotic growth lent strange forms to design, and symbolism
became rampant. For a time, indeed, emblematic bindings were accepted as
the note of the new style which was to mark the century, and in the
hands of the indifferent artist became a real terror. There is obviously
no such thing as ‘new art’—there is simply art or there is not, and
there can be no real art without good craftsmanship. Under pretext of
inventing a style that was to belong to the century, all that was done
was to perpetuate grotesqueness instead of originality and a burlesque
of ideas in their application to binding.
Meanwhile discussion as to the limitations of material naturally became
faster and more furious, while the literature on the subject grew apace.
In 1896 a controversy arose between Gruel and Michel, the former being
supported by Bosquet, a binder holding an important position in the
library of Messrs. Hachette and a frequent writer on his craft both in
its historical and technical aspects. We, for whom the artistic crafts
occupy a very subordinate position, can hardly imagine the heat of
discussion that rages round a subject like this in France. The
combatants at once range themselves on opposite sides, and the weapons
used are all the resources of a language pre-eminently suited to satire
and ridicule, but which somehow seem an armoury out of place on so
restricted a battlefield. The Frenchman, however, is never so happy
himself, nor, may we say, so entertaining to his neighbours, as when his
tongue and his pen are giving effect to the ready wit that seems always
at his service.
[Illustration: 39. BOUND BY MERCIER.]
M. Gruel, whose efforts were directed towards stemming the tide of
eccentricity associated with _l’art nouveau_, pointed out the
impossibility that a new style should spring up on demand, and
recommended a return to the study of past models and a gradual
transformation of these into fresh departures. M. Michel replied that a
firm break with tradition was necessary in order to avoid the constant
repetition of the past and the mixture of styles which had long been the
only resource of the ineffective designer. It was necessary, he said,
either to return to nature or to seek inspiration from other arts
besides binding. So the excitement grew, aided that same year by an
exhibition in the Champ de Mars in which bindings from the school of
Nancy, under the direction of Wiener, achieved a notoriety which only
fanned the flame. These bindings soon got the nickname of _reliures
d’affiche_, and painting was the art from which they derived their
inspiration. The book was now looked on as a canvas on which to depict
in different-coloured moroccos various scenes from life or nature. In
some cases the composition was not even contained on one panel, but
strayed over the back to finish on the under cover. The symbolist school
with its picture binding has had a considerable vogue, though not in the
extreme of violent reproduction of the Nancy school. Michel was himself
influenced by it, and both he and Meunier were represented in this same
exhibition with subjects in relief and allegorical representations in
mosaic. The next development was the sculpture binding, which Michel
distinctly furthered by suggesting to Lepère that he should model a
cover for the solitary copy on Japan paper of _Paysages Parisiens_,
which he had not only illustrated, but the drawings for which he had
also engraved on wood and on copper. Since that time the modelled
leather work of Lepère has taken a permanent place among book covers of
the day; it is masterly in conception and execution, but would be as
fine and more appropriate in a panel framed on a wall than on a binding.
The art of the leather worker is one, whether applied to the coffer, the
blotter, or the book—it is but the shape and the purpose that defines
the appropriateness or inappropriateness of any particular treatment.
Marius and Lepère represent the highest point attained by _le cuir
incisé_. Artists of their attainments are rare, and it is only such
artists who can be tolerated in deviations from the normal and whose
inventions can in any sense be held to justify the result. Most
collectors content themselves with a specimen or two in their libraries
of the sculptured or symbolic or bejewelled binding, be it ever so
curious, and turn with satisfaction to the more ordered ways of some
modification or another of past traditions.
[Illustration: 40. BOUND BY MERCIER.]
[Illustration: 41. BOUND BY MERCIER.]
To turn now from this brief account of the recent developments of French
binding to the Galliera exhibition.
The books shown by M. Léon Gruel, whom his son Paul now most ably
seconds, were, as may be supposed, of the highest importance. The house
is one of the oldest in Paris, having been established in 1811 by
Deforge, by whom M. Gruel’s father was employed. M. Léon Gruel is an
enthusiast who has all the antiquarian as well as the practical
knowledge of binding at his fingers’ ends. He has a fine collection of
old bindings and all sorts of documents relating to them, and some of
these he used for his important publication in 1887, _Manuel historique
et bibliographique de l’amateur de reliures_, a second instalment of
which appeared in 1904. The characteristic of the business has always
been the production of fine editions of liturgies and books of a
devotional character, which made it famous long ago, and the bindings of
which have always been specially designed and carried out under the
direction of M. Gruel. It would have been natural enough had he been
content with the great commercial success attained by the house, due to
the industry and business qualities of the direction of successive
members of his family. But instead of that, it has been his ambition to
show that he could with equal success follow every turn taken by the art
in the various directions that its recent evolution has demanded. The
styles associated with the names of Grolier, the Eves, and le Gascon,
are reproduced for those clients who demand them, while the more modern
mosaic work, blind-tooled or with gold, is invented and executed with
equal facility. One style revived from the past, that of _le cuir
incisé_, he has made especially his own, and he treats it in an entirely
different manner to that of Marius. The difference in procedure is
briefly this: the incised leather of Marius is not one with the binding,
but is a thick piece of calf, worked first by cutting and modelling, and
then introduced as a panel sunk into the cover. In Gruel’s method the
cover is the unit on which the design is modelled while damp, then
coloured, and finally hardened. To succeed in this technique needs great
delicacy of handling and a constant practice in its methods. It gives
plenty of scope for emblematic treatment, which, in the hands of
Rossigneux, who designed much of this work in former days for Gruel, was
of great artistic merit: at the present time it is executed mainly by a
son of M. Bosquet, already spoken of as an important writer on the
critical and technical aspects of what is also his own craft. Rossigneux
was an architect and designer of surprising talent, who did not hesitate
to learn the technicalities of binding that he might devote himself to
the decoration of book covers, not only in leather but in carved wood,
for which he was especially famous. M. Léon Gruel is the master of a
large workshop to which his men are proud to belong. As President of the
Chambre Syndicate he has rendered important services, freely
acknowledged, in an insistence on sound teaching and a wise
encouragement of the coming generation of binders. The variety of his
achievement is a constant surprise even to those who know his
versatility, for at each successive exhibition he seems able to add
fresh laurels to those which have always surrounded the name of his
house.
[Illustration: 42. BOUND BY RUBAN.]
Émile Mercier has the reputation of being the finest gilder in
Paris—_l’artiste impeccable_, as his fellows call him—and he is perhaps
the one man in whom they and the public recognize the chief exponent of
the best traditions without being in any sense a servile imitator of the
past. His individuality is a sympathetic one to all, and even in that
little world of keen opposition and personal jealousy he cannot count a
single enemy. He took over the atelier of Cuzin in 1890, at the age of
thirty-six, on the death of his chief, with whom his relations had long
been of the happiest kind, and for whose clients he had executed all the
fine designs associated with the name of Cuzin. There is an immense
difference in the mere technique of ‘tooling,’ or gilding as it is
always called abroad—a difference almost impossible to put into words,
but which is none the less visible to the eye for such distinctions. No
French gilding could possibly be mistaken for English, and the reverse
is also true. But even among French gilders, where the method prevails
of laborious and patient but absolutely certain reworking of the tools
in impressions previously made, Mercier stands out as pre-eminent. His
work has a vigour and sureness of handling, his gilding a brilliancy and
solidity as well as elegance of appearance that are beyond criticism.
Though he himself works as hard as ever, he has already brought up in
his workshop several young finishers of great merit, among whom
Mayloender is mentioned as already of fine performance as well as of
future promise. Content to quietly excel, Mercier has raised no
opposition by any manifesto, and his position of first rank is accepted
by all without hesitation as to its justice.
Pétrus Ruban, born at Villefranche in 1851, seemed for some time
undecided as to whether he should join the ranks of the traditional or
the revolutionary binders. He was at first obviously inspired by the
newer decorative attempts of Henri Marius Michel, but has recently left
the circle of innovators for the more restricted ranks of the
_relieurs-doreurs_, of whom Mercier is the head. Nevertheless M. Ruban’s
power of invention has enabled him to produce some remarkably fine
‘blind-tooled’ mosaics, in which striking effects of colour have been
managed without a sacrifice of taste. The finish of his craftsmanship is
undoubted: no one has finer mastery over tools and leather, and a
faultless treatment of exquisite material distinguishes everything he
turns out. It may seem as if too much stress is laid upon this
perfection of execution which characterises French work in a way that is
unknown to our craftsmen. And it is true that it too often proves a
snare, giving an occasion for making difficulties merely to show how
they can be triumphed over. But, on the other hand, it is a matter in
which we in England are all too negligent. The insistence of late on the
comparative unimportance of technique in relation to originality of
invention has been disastrous, and the Arts and Crafts Society has, if
we may venture to say so, given far too much encouragement to that point
of view. There have been bindings shown there which were defective in
the very elements of sound ‘forwarding’—in the finish that comes of an
effective _corps d’ouvrage_, and that should never have been admitted
into an exhibition supposed to be especially selective. It may be truly
said that nothing is a work of art unless it attains to a fairly perfect
technique, even though the decorative conception may be of considerable
value.
[Illustration: 43. BOUND BY RUBAN.]
[Illustration: 44. BOUND BY RUBAN.]
Charles Meunier, born in 1866, served a short but energetic
apprenticeship to Marius Michel, and then at the age of twenty decided
to start for himself. Keen to succeed and make a place among the
foremost binders of Paris, he worked with a restless and unceasing
effort that might well have proved disastrous to his career. The
increasing costliness of whole-binding due to the demands for
originality made by amateurs had given an impetus to half-binding which
Meunier was not slow to avail himself of. He at once set about supplying
the demand, executing some five or six hundred, each with a different
emblematic design upon the back. It was the moment when, as has been
shown, the symbolist movement was at its height, and the young binder
naturally echoed the note of the day. It was the same with the _cuir
ciselé_, in which he quickly attained great skill, doing forty copies
alone, with as many different designs of _L’histoire des quatre fils
d’Aymon_, a book illustrated by Eugène Grasset, which proved a failure
commercially until Marius floated it by means of his fine bindings with
motives taken from the illustrations themselves. Meunier has now almost
attained the position he coveted. His style has become chastened in
accordance with the increasing distaste of eccentricity, and he gives
greater care to the details of execution, which, according to French
standards, left something to be desired in the early days of his rather
too exuberant fancy. Last year he held a special exhibition in New York,
showing some seventy specimens in which his decorative skill was
extensively represented. His taste in colour may seem somewhat crude and
his motives bizarre, but of the mastery over his materials there is no
doubt. His snare is that he is a decorator before anything else, and not
always sufficiently restrained, or mindful of the best traditions of
decoration in its particular application to binding.
[Illustration: 45. BOUND BY CARAYON.]
The reputation of M. Carayon is based upon _le cartonnage_, or ‘casing’
as we call it, and which is with us an inferior form of binding mainly
confined to publishers’ editions. In this work the cases or covers,
whether of cloth or leather, are made separately and the book held to
them by the very slight attachment of pasting down the endpapers,
instead of the slips on which the book is sewn being laced into the
boards and then being subsequently covered with the material selected.
But in France _cartonnage à la Bradel_ has become a fine art mainly
through the instrumentality of M. Carayon. Supposed to be of German
origin, it takes its name from the binder who first used it in France,
where for some time it was considered as a temporary binding for books
of value which in this way were left uncut at the edges and handled as
little as possible. M. Carayon, born in 1840, started life as a soldier,
soon giving up that career to become a decorative painter; but his love
of books and all that concerns them finally decided his occupation. Type
of the true art worker, he is to be found all day long in his atelier,
though sadly crippled with rheumatism, devising some new application of
_le genre Bradel_. All materials come alike to him; morocco, calf,
vellum, brocade, velvet, even simple paper, produce in his hands the
most exquisite results. Amateurs confide to his charge their most costly
possessions, and the first artists of the day, such as Robaudi, Henriot
and Louis Morin, decorate his vellum work with pen-and-ink and
water-colour drawings. If one wants, indeed, to realize that the beauty
of a binding does not lie in tooling, or indeed in any kind of ornament,
one need only handle the little paper-covered books turned out by
Carayon for a few francs. At the same time neither inlaying nor gilding
has any secrets from him, and he devises the modelled, leather work
executed for him by Rudeaux with the delicacy and sureness of taste that
distinguish all he undertakes.
[Illustration: 46. BOUND BY CARAYON.]
[Illustration: 47. BOUND BY CARAYON.]
Chambolle most worthily continues the traditions associated with the
name of his father. As an interpreter of the past he has a place apart
and almost untouched by the main revolutionary movement that has
penetrated nearly every atelier in Paris, and modified, if not
overturned, its inherited traditions. To him are confided the classics
of former times, which he clothes in the styles appropriate to them,
keeping to a simplicity of ornamentation which reveals great taste and
feeling for composition. Wisely enough, he rarely goes outside his own
domain, where, in these days of reckless pursuit of novelty, he remains
almost supreme.
Canape is a young binder of increasing reputation. At present he seems
to specialize in what is called _la gaufrure à froid_, in which
different-coloured moroccos are tooled without gold—a style which has
been much in favour of late years, and in which Marius Michel was the
first to effect great triumphs. His career has been watched with much
interest for the last few years, and he is thought to be steadily taking
place in the first rank.
Kieffer, too, is a binder whose work has a distinctly personal touch,
and whose bindings have an individuality of their own. The reproductions
shown testify to a certain largeness of conception in design, which,
though somewhat mannered, has distinct value.
M. Pierre Roche has struck a new note in what he calls _la reliure
églomisée_. It is work done on something of the same lines as that
attempted by Mr. Cedric Chivers of Bath. He uses a transparent vellum
which covers and protects the decoration, which thus appears, to use his
own words, as if behind a veil. ‘C’est l’esprit du livre qui vient du
dedans en dehors apparaître au travers des matières solides qui le
protègent.’ A sculptor of great talent, this has been merely a
recreation to him. He has done but a small number of books for a few
distinguished clients, and, notwithstanding their success, has, like a
true artist, refused to be drawn into manufacturing them, feeling it
doubtful whether it is a style that should be popularized to any great
extent, or rather remain as an occasional variation of the more
accredited ways of book-cover decoration.
[Illustration: 48. BOUND BY CHAMBOLLE.]
We have perhaps said enough to indicate the variety of the work shown at
the Galliera Museum, its high attainment in the field of design, and its
still higher achievement in the matter of craftsmanship. One impression
remains very clearly, that there were two distinct classes of
exhibitors, the professional binder, so to speak, and the artist intent
on producing decorative material for bindings. The first looks at a book
as a thing to bind and handle, and is restrained in his methods by the
use and purpose to which it is to be put. The second considers it as a
surface to decorate, by means of painting or the aid of any other of the
arts. The modelled work of Lepère, above alluded to, is an instance of
this; so also is that of Mdme. Vallgren, which likewise consist of
panels that are let into bindings prepared for that purpose by Marius
and others. Admirable in their way, they would be equally effective as
decorative objects framed upon a wall, and can but be considered a
fantasy in connexion with books. Bibliomania in France is responsible
for much that is disastrously eccentric and decadent. It is a form of
vanity in which collectors vie with each other, and involves an
expenditure not only on books but on bindings that would now seem to
have reached the limit of extravagance. But such eccentricity is less
than it was, and need no longer fill the eye to the exclusion of what is
really finely conceived as well as exquisitely executed. If Paris still
produces too many bindings of the bizarre and overdecorated kind, we can
still go to her for the masterpieces of simplicity and for flawlessness
of material faultlessly treated. Some day even the best binders may
cease to support _l’art nouveau_ by the force of their skill and energy,
but will rather confine themselves, as in the past, to the simple
dignity that distinguished bindings in the best periods, and to the
accomplishment of that fine restraint which must always be the
high-water mark of bookbinding as a fine art.
EDITION BINDING[6]
Of late years, with that revival of craftsmanship, according to the
gospel of Ruskin and William Morris, already dwelt upon, there has been
a rush into all the departments of manual dexterity needing for
successful achievement the guidance of artistic feeling. The result of
this has been that there is a tendency to exaggerate the importance of
the ornamental and the decorated, to the exclusion of not only
simplicity but, let us say frankly, of plainness and the undecorated
surface of flawless material. The over-elaboration of the decorative
arts must inevitably produce a reaction sooner or later, very quickly
for those who prefer restraint, more slowly for the majority of the
public, to whom ornament is always synonymous with art. For such as
these fashion counts for much; and it is in the hope that those who lead
taste in the matter of edition bindings may find a scope for their
enterprise on somewhat new lines that I ask consideration for this
chapter.
[Illustration: 49. BOUND BY CHAMBOLLE.]
[Illustration: 50. BOUND BY CHAMBOLLE.]
After all, the costly bindings achieved for wealthy amateurs must always
constitute but a small portion of the output of bound work. There will
remain the cloth or leather-covered book in greater or smaller editions,
for which covers are made in quantities by machinery, separately from
the book, and for decorating which metal dies are cut and stamped by
means of an embossing press, either with or without the addition of
colours or gold leaf. It is of this class of work that I propose to
treat, giving first a brief account of the stages through which it has
passed in modern times, then showing how it was dealt with, though on a
much smaller scale, in the early days of printing, and finally offering
some suggestions for its more varied and, as I think, more artistic
treatment in the future. This treatment would necessitate the employment
of leather; but there is no reason why the less expensive kinds of skins
should not be used, not perhaps for books issued in large numbers, but
for small editions where a little extra outlay could be easily recovered
on the published price of the work. Roans made from the best sheepskins,
which are the hides of Scotch sheep, would not be a costly material, and
would give good results in the embossing press. Pigskin is a very
suitable material for the better class of bindings on which stamps are
to be used, and is both strong and comparatively inexpensive,
considering the size of the skins. Vellum, again, might be occasionally
used for small editions; it blocks well, and is most effective with but
little ornament. At one time much in demand for bindings, it ceased for
many years to be used at all in England, except in account-book
manufacture, when it was generally stained green. It has lately come
into fashion again, chiefly for limp work, through the initiative of
William Morris, who introduced it on most of the works issued by him
from the Kelmscott Press; and both the Doves Press and the Ashendene
Press have continued to employ it. To observe its suitability for
blocking, either when used limp or on boards, we have only to turn to
the coats-of-arms which frequently decorated it on the books of the
great collectors of past times. There was a very fine specimen of
vellum, ornamented in black, shown at the Burlington Fine Arts
Exhibition in 1891. But before considering in detail how edition
bindings were treated in the days when, comparatively speaking, books
were few in number, we will get some idea of their treatment in more
recent times, starting with the last century.
[Illustration: 51. BOUND BY CANAPE.]
Up to, roughly speaking, about 1825, books of the type of dictionaries,
classics, school books, and books of reference were mostly bound in roan
or sprinkled sheep; while books of history, poetry, and novels were
issued in drab or olive-coloured paper boards, with a printed label
pasted on the back, or the full title printed on the back and sides, as
in the case of Walker’s _British Classics_ (1818). It was very rarely
that anything but a dull colour was used, though Whittingham’s _British
Poets_ (1816) had a dark Venetian red paper, and the class of literature
known in those days as gift-books or annuals occasionally appeared in
vellum-coloured paper, stamped with gold. The more valuable of these,
however, filled with choice steel engravings and prepared for the
Christmas market, were bound in morocco and silk, and issued under such
titles as _The Keepsake_, _The Bijou_, _Friendship’s Offering_, _The
Book of Beauty_, _The Landscape Annual_, and so on. Such books commanded
a large sale, even in those days; and a writer on the subject, in the
first volume of _The Bookbinder_, mentions Finden’s _Tableaux_, two
thousand imperial quarto volumes, full bound in best morocco, gilt. The
paper-covered boards, which clothed the larger number of the books of
that time, had a way of cracking at the hinge, and so becoming
disconnected, a difficulty which was got over about 1822 by covering the
back with calico or cloth. As an illustration of this step we may take
Scott’s _Waverley Novels_. The _Novels and Tales_, in twelve volumes,
appeared in 1819 in pink paper, with white labels; the _Historical
Romances_, in six volumes, followed in 1822, in blue paper, with pink
cloth back and white paper labels; and _Novels and Romances_ in 1824 in
the same fashion. The next step was that of covering books entirely with
cloth, introduced by Mr. Archibald Leighton, one of the most
enterprising and successful of modern binders, whose business capacity
and energy secured for him the patronage of the chief publishers of the
day. He bound for Murray, Pickering, Colbourn, Tilt, Charles Knight,
Moon, Boys, Graves, and many others, and died prematurely in 1841,
leaving to his family a well-established business which, under a
somewhat varying character, has remained in their hands up to the
present time.
In the _Bookseller_ of July 4, 1881, there is an interesting account, by
Mr. Robert Leighton, of the invention of bookbinders’ cloth by his
father, and of how the subsequent embossing of it came about. The exact
date of cloth binding he is not able to state, but says that he has in
his library a volume, presented to his father by the author, bound in
smooth, red cloth, with a paper label. The publishers’ names are
Lackington, Hughes, Harding and Lepard, and the date on the title-page
is 1822. There is every reason to believe that it is one of a number
similarly bound in that year. In those days the white calico was bought
in London, sent to the dyers to be dyed, and thence to Mr. John
Southgate, of 3 Crown Court, Old Change, to be stiffened and calendered.
The embossing of bookbinders’ cloth was suggested by Mr. Archibald
Leighton to the late Mr. de la Rue, and was carried out so admirably by
him, with the appliances he possessed for embossing paper, that his
process remains still comparatively unaltered. The desired pattern was
engraved on a gun-metal cylinder, and transferred in reverse to one made
of compressed paper, strung upon an iron spindle and turned in the lathe
to the exact circumference of the gun-metal one, and these two being
worked together in a machine, and the pattern transferred from one to
the other, the cloth was passed between them and received the impress of
the pattern engraved on the metal cylinder.
[Illustration: 52. BOUND BY CANAPE.]
In this way the whole of the cloth used by Messrs. Leighton was for many
years embossed upon their own premises. The cylinders were only fourteen
or fifteen inches wide, and the machine was turned by manual labour and
heated by red-hot irons, which were placed in the gun-metal cylinder and
replaced by others when cold. In those days it was customary to engrave
special cylinders for books of importance, and you may still
occasionally meet with stray volumes of _The Penny Cyclopædia_ or
Knight’s _Pictorial England_, and such like popular works, with embossed
cloth covers so prepared. Mr. Pickering was the first person for whom
Mr. Leighton bound books in cloth, and either his ‘Aldine Poets’ or the
‘Diamond Classics’ were the first books on which it was put. The first
person to undertake the embossing of bookbinders’ cloth on cylinders a
yard wide was Mr. Law, of Monkwell Street, and for years he embossed all
the cloth sold by Mr. James Leonard Wilson, of St. John Street, who had
followed Mr. Leighton’s methods in the preparation and sale of the
cloth. Mr. Wilson sold his business to Messrs. Duffield, who established
a manufactory of bookbinders’ cloth at Hoxton, and so improved it that
for years he held practically a monopoly of its output. The exact period
when gold-stamping was first applied to cloth is clearly marked by the
publication of Lord Byron’s life and works, in seventeen volumes, by Mr.
John Murray, of Albemarle Street. The volumes were published monthly,
and had a sale of about 20,000. They were bound in green cloth, and the
first volume was issued in 1832, with a green paper label on the back,
matching the cloth in colour, on which was printed in bronze the title
and a coronet; on the second and succeeding volumes the paper label was
dispensed with, and the coronet and title were stamped in gold upon the
cloth itself. Mr. Henry George Bohn, in a letter addressed to the _Art
Journal_, says that his father, John Henry Bohn, a German bookbinder,
established about 1795 in Frith Street, Soho, had a special reputation
for gilding on the silk linings of books, as well as calf-graining,
tree-marbling, and other special processes, all of which he himself made
acquaintance with when a boy. ‘In later life,’ he continues, ‘the
knowledge of the peculiar dressing used for gilding on silk enabled me
to communicate to Mr. Leighton the means of getting cloth prepared so as
to take gilding by heated machinery at the rolling or stamping press,
which a leading trade firm said was impracticable. The process, however,
after a few weeks’ experiments conducted by the late Mr. James Leonard
Wilson, was successfully accomplished; and Mr. Leighton thereupon wrote
to me triumphantly announcing the fact, and undertaking in consequence
to bind in gilt cloth several thousand volumes at half the price I
should previously have had to pay, on account of the necessity of having
to add leather backs for taking the gold by hand tooling. The book was
Martin and Westall’s _Bible Points_, which I brought out in 1832. What
to me at the time seemed an accomplishment of little moment has now
become of such importance to cloth binders that, could the discovery
have been patented, it would have yielded a considerable income.’
[Illustration: 53. BOUND BY CANAPE.]
This Mr. Robert Leighton, who thus wrote of his father’s invention, was
himself the pioneer in the use of steam machinery in bookbinding, and he
adopted in his own business nearly all the machinery which has since
become indispensable to the wholesale binder. He was also the first to
use steam power for blocking in gold; the first to use aluminium, and
black and coloured inks for cloth cases, examples of which he showed in
the exhibition of 1851. He had a great reputation for the designs of his
cloth bindings, which he devised in conjunction with his artist cousin,
John Leighton, known as Luke Limner, a good instance being the pleasant
and appropriate covers for Mrs. Jameson’s _Legends of the Madonna_ and
_Legends of the Monastic Orders_. The two Leightons, father and son,
thus inaugurated and furthered the great revolution in the art of
edition binding associated with the employment for the purpose of
specially prepared cloth, and its decoration by means of steam-blocking
in gold and colours. It was natural that such an invention should lead
to abuse; and in a short time, unfortunately, there was so much gilt
ornament that a strong reaction took place, and, while cloth as a
material for the cover continued to be used, it was either left plain or
had a single bordering line in gold, with or without the title likewise
in gold upon the sides. More recently colour printing upon cloth has
been revived with excellent results in many cases, especially where an
artist who understands the power and limitations of the blocking process
has been employed upon the designs. Many of these are entirely without
gold, and give representations of scenes taken from the books with
excellent impressionist effect. One may mention as instances in England
the novels published by Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, such as _In Our
Town_, _Her Majesty’s Minister_, _Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch_, _The
Hebrew_, and many others of the same firm, one of whose members gives
special attention to the successful production of cloth covers. The
bindings of books issued by Mr. John Lane are also frequently very
successful, though it is not so easy to keep in touch with the output of
American work on similar lines. Messrs. Puttenham have produced some
excellent examples of taste in colour printing, notably _The Romance of
the Colorado River_, _Puerto Rican_, _Lights of Childhood_, and _The
Romance of the Renaissance Chateaux_, in which the castle of Langeais is
shown in black on a grey cloth. The same house publish likewise one or
two books bound in plain cloth, with a photographic print on the cover,
which seemed a pleasant variation not in use over here; while
_Twenty-Six Historic Ships_, also issued by them, is a most satisfactory
example of blocking with white foil on a blue ground. At Messrs.
Appleton’s are to be found several specimens of bookbinders’ cloth which
do not come over here at all. We have but little variety in the nature
and preparation of our cloth; while in America it is treated in many
different ways, which naturally give very varied results in the
blocking-press.
Messrs. Gay and Bird issue some effective colour printing on _In South
Africa with Buller_, and an attractive example of a loch and mountain
scene in four sombre colours on _The Story of Gösta Berling_. There is
little doubt that the most artistic effects are got by using very few
colours in harmony rather than in contrast with the cloth. Gold is much
more sparingly used for cloth work than formerly, and with far better
taste. _Paris in its Splendour_, published by the last-named firm, is an
interesting example of the different effects that can be obtained from
the gold by varieties of matted ground in the block; while in _Walden_,
issued by Messrs. Houghton and Mifflin, the cloth of the cover
represents the design, the gold being confined to suggesting the
background, with a decidedly original result.
This, then, is the position of cloth binding at the present time as
shown by the leading publishers’ work. The technical processes are
probably as perfect as such things can be, the drawings are frequently
the work of artists, there is far more restraint than formerly both in
the matter of design and the employment of colour, while the taste in
colour schemes is often as good as possible, and a great advance on that
shown a decade or two ago. We do not think that in that special branch
of edition bindings there is any great advance to be made or novelty to
be assumed, though no doubt we may expect a wider diffusion of the taste
that we have noted in the best work and an increasingly small number of
book covers inferior in design, colour, and general effect.
In what direction, then, can we hope for any new departure? In order to
answer the question, and complete the scope of this chapter, it is
necessary to spend a short time in studying the bindings in which books
were clothed when they were less numerous, and during a period when they
reached what many think the high-water mark of successful decoration.
[Illustration: 54. BOUND BY CANAPE.]
[Illustration: 55. BOUND BY CANAPE.]
The work of the early printers was issued in trade bindings just as
publishers’ work is now sent out, but in those days stationers combined
the craft of binding with the business of bookselling. The earliest of
all were decorated by building up designs from dies, these being
arranged in pattern schemes which Mr. W. H. James Weale was the first to
analyze and set forth in the catalogue of the fine collection of
rubbings of bindings which he presented to the National Art Library of
South Kensington in 1894. These schemes were taken from the covers of
manuscripts from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, but the same
kind of arrangement, though not so elaborate, may be seen on the
earliest printed books; also witness the illustrations to the monographs
on early Oxford and Cambridge bindings issued by the Bibliographical
Society. Small books were stamped with a panel on the sides, and these
often had the initials or mark of the binder, which have led in many
instances to the ascription of particular bindings to the stationers who
issued them, though a still greater number still remain to be
identified. The blocks were generally small, and were used sometimes one
on each side between a bordering of roughly drawn lines; sometimes two
together were placed upon one side, and connected with lines or some
simple device; and occasionally on large books four panels were arranged
in rows of two. The material of the binding was ass’s-skin, pigskin,
calfskin,—though not the fragile kind now associated with the name—and
vellum, but chiefly the three first. The stamps or blocks used were cut
in intaglio, either on hard wood or on metal, producing the impression
in cameo; the design was often both strong and delicate in treatment,
the impression after all these years showing great artistic vigour and
inventiveness. Indeed, nothing can be more excellent than the dragons,
gryphons, and other mythical animals in the pear-shaped, triangular,
circular, or square dies arranged within the pattern schemes of the very
early bindings. It is known exactly how these stamps were used upon the
bindings; it is probable that, when panel stamps were used, the leather
was thoroughly wetted and the book then placed in a screw press, under a
block of wood or metal, for the length of time needed to obtain a clear
impression. In _Marques Typographiques_ by Silvestre, there is a
printers’ mark, used by Petrus Cesar Gaudanus, otherwise Pierre de
Keyser, of Ghent, between 1516 and 1547, which represents a book
undergoing pressure in a printers’ press; and Josse Bade, likewise a
stationer and printer of Paris, who died in 1535, used a somewhat
similar one. Though there is obviously a book in the press, the picture
may relate to a process not connected with binding; but in any case it
probably represents what must have been the procedure used in impressing
the stamps. These dies passed from one workshop to another, and none of
them are extant to my knowledge in England, though the heraldic blocks
used on books in the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. were decidedly
numerous and of great artistic merit. In the Netherlands these designs
were the binders’ property and protected as such, but in England, where
the binders were not organized into separate guilds, this was not the
case, and piracy was everywhere prevalent.
[Illustration: 56. BOUND BY KIEFFER.]
On many of the blocks there appear two indentations or holes about a
quarter of an inch in diameter, situated within the border at the top
and bottom of the panel. The precise purport of these is unknown, and
many plausible theories have been invented to account for them. One such
suggests that they were stop buttons to prevent the stamp from sinking
too far into the leather, but it is more probable that they indicate the
heads of nails or pegs which fastened the carved block or metal stamp to
another piece of wood. Sometimes the impressions made by them are almost
imperceptible, at others there has been an attempt at concealment by
carrying the ornament across. Many of the subjects pictured on these
stamps were of a religious character: thus the Baptism of Christ, Saint
John the Baptist, the Crucifixion, Our Lady of Pity, the Ara Cœli, and
the different saints and apostles, are all represented upon these early
book covers. For an account of them, and for a general history of early
stamped bindings, which contains also a certain amount of illustration,
the interested reader cannot do better than procure the two volumes,
published at half a crown by the Department of Science and Art, at South
Kensington, entitled _Bookbindings and Rubbings of Bindings in the
National Art Library of South Kensington Museum_, by W. H. James Weale.
This class of binding has given rise to much dispute of an archæological
kind, with which, happily, we are not concerned at the moment. Whether
the stamps were of wood or metal, in what country they originated, their
authorship as indicated by initials incorporated in the design, their
_provenance_ as apart from the country in which they were in use, who
was the inventor of the pattern roller,—all such questions we may leave
aside, the point of interest being the fact of the stamp and its
astonishing variety of character, for many styles were represented by
it, all, with but few exceptions, of great merit and suitability to
their end. For the present purpose, and as far as ornament is concerned,
they may be classified somewhat as follows:—
1. Small Gothic dies with palmated leaves, animals, and so on, combined
in design according to certain fixed patterns, such as those on the
Bible written and bound in the monastery at Durham for Hugh Pudsey,
bishop of that diocese from 1153 to 1195, and other books in the same
cathedral library.
2. Interlaced ornament of several distinct types, some Celtic in
character, on the earliest books in leather that have come down to us,
executed in the north of England in the twelfth century, others
recalling the designs on Roman mosaic pavement; others, again, Eastern
in character. Perhaps the most beautiful interlaced patterns of all
belong to the latter class, and are the cablework designs found on
Italian books of the last half of the fifteenth century, no doubt copied
from Arabian examples.
The Spanish bindings of the first half of the sixteenth century have
interlaced ornament of as fine a kind, but often lacking in the
comparative simplicity of the Italian.
3. The Gothic stamps of mythical animals, enclosed in circles or
scrollwork, bordered with Gothic foliage, and frequently containing a
legend. These were mostly of German origin, and were no doubt inspired
by the work of Albert Dürer and his contemporaries.
4. The heraldic panels decorated with royal badges, used in England
during the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII.
5. The panel stamps of a purely decorative kind, such as those with the
religious subjects above mentioned; others like the well-known two used
by Moulin, of a miller with his sacks, in punning allusion to his name;
and those in use by Norins, in which the acorn figures largely as an
ornament.
6. Lastly, the panel stamps with two profile busts in medallion within a
framework of Renaissance ornament, thoroughly debased in character, and
marking the complete decline of the binder’s stamp.
I would sum up, in conclusion, the points I have desired to emphasize,
and which are as follows:—
That the flat blocking of cloth work in gold and colours by no means
exhausts the treatment possible for edition or publishers’ bindings. It
has undoubtedly been largely overdone, for lavish ornament is distinctly
out of place as applied to cheap material, such as cloths and linens.
Indeed, as decoration for the ordinary novel of a few shillings nothing
is in better taste than a single design carried out in two or three
colour printings without gold, such as some of those mentioned.
[Illustration: 57. BOUND BY KIEFFER.]
[Illustration: 58. BOUND BY KIEFFER.]
That there is room for a totally distinct class of bindings for small
editions of more important publications, which should be in leather and
blocked with a stamp of fine design without gold, which will give a
raised impression. For this purpose zincographic blocks are of no use,
but brass, as a material which admits of modelling, would be imperative.
That the designing of such stamps should be put in the hands of the few
artists having a genius for the work, which is quite special in
character, and belongs more to the art of the medallist than to that of
the maker of patterns. We in no way want their undue multiplication, but
would rather, indeed, that they should be reserved for a limited number
of publications, for which the subject-matter, paper and type constitute
together a whole, worthy of a dignified cover that will stand the lapse
of time. In these days of book lovers and collectors of every sort, it
is certainly not unlikely that there are many who would welcome a new
venture of this kind, in which they would associate the binding with the
book, and have no desire to separate the one from the other. In the
little Bibelot series, Messrs. Gay and Bird have already made a slight
attempt on the lines I am suggesting.
Lastly, we have tried to show that there is no dearth of material from
which the designer of such work may glean the principles on which it
should be based, in order to secure satisfactory results. Apart from the
bindings still extant, which may be studied for the purpose, such
sources as the _Book of Kells_ and _Early Christian Art in Ireland_, by
Margaret Stokes, are full of illustrations in a field strangely little
explored by the pattern maker of to-day.
While only a limited number of early examples have been instanced, they
are suggestive of what was done in edition binding in the past, and may
be done again in the future. Such a departure needs, no doubt, the
initiative of a printer-publisher who does the best kind of work, and in
a field that commands the interested support of the genuine book lover.
Surely, however, to find such an one ought not to be difficult with the
widespread interest now shown in every detail of book production.
-----
Footnote 1:
For the benefit of those who are interested in the technicality of
what is known as ‘tooling,’ we will briefly describe in what it
consists. ‘Finishing tools’ are stamps of metal that have a pattern
cut on the face, and the shanks of which are held in wooden handles.
Such patterns can be complete in themselves, or the single ‘tools’ may
have only the elements of a pattern that needs to be built up, for the
‘tools’ must not be too large, or they cannot be worked with sureness
of result. The design is composed of these ‘tools’ in combination with
gouges which are curved lines. The drawing is first made accurately on
paper by means of blackening the tools in a candle or lightly
impressing them on an ink-pad. This paper is then placed on the book
and slightly attached with paste at each corner. The tools are next
gently heated and reworked on the drawing, leaving an impression in
‘blind,’ as it is called, on the leather sufficient to be seen through
the gold leaf when this is applied ready for the next operation. The
cover is now damped with water and the impressions left by the tools
pencilled over with a preparation of white of egg known as glaire,
applied with a camel-hair brush. When this is sufficiently dry, but
not too dry, the gold leaf is put on, and the individual ‘tools,’
taken at just the right heat, are reworked in the impressions seen
faintly beneath the gold. Fresh gold may have to be applied and the
pattern reworked several times if the tools are solid or the leather
for any reason presents special difficulties. These are, roughly
speaking, the processes necessary to the working of a design, though
many small ones have been omitted. It will be seen at once, however,
from this brief account: firstly, that there are no freehand
possibilities about the operation; and secondly, that to be a good
finisher a workman should know something of drawing, for he cannot
make a correct pattern, much less one that has any organic meaning,
unless he understands how to combine small tools with taste and
judgment. He must know what to leave out as well as what to put in; if
there is inlaying, he must have a sense of colour-harmony and
contrast, and he must understand enough of styles not to mix up those
of different periods, nor to select one that is unsuitable to the
special character of the book.
Footnote 2:
The technical schools, it may be noted, with the exceptions perhaps of
the Borough Polytechnic, are not looked on with favour by the trade,
who are ever adverse to any alteration in the traditional habits of a
craft; but it is difficult to see, without some experiments of the
kind, how the learner is to get the advantages of intelligent
training, which he did under the old system of apprenticeship. Now
that Trades Unions have a tendency to deteriorate the quality and
limit the output of the adult worker, it is well that there should be
some influences brought to bear upon him in the earlier stages of his
career that make for appreciative insight into the meaning of his work
and cultivate his taste in its more artistic possibilities.
Footnote 3:
With tooled edges the leaves of the book are gilt as usual, and while
still in the press, the head, tail and foredge are worked over with
‘tools’ that are open in character, the finer ones being preferable.
These tools must be slightly warmed, so that the impression may be
firm. Sometimes the edge is tooled on the gold before burnishing, when
the impressed pattern will naturally be of a different colour to the
burnished part, as the burnisher will glide over the indentations. At
others a different-coloured gold is laid on the top of the first and
tooled upon, when the pattern will be left in the new gold on the
original colour.
Footnote 4:
This painting can be with or without gold. In any case, it is
necessary that the leaves should be fanned out and tied slightly
between boards. While in this position the colour is applied, which
can be either a stain or water-colour moistened with size. When dry,
the leaves are released, and may be left as they are or gilt in the
ordinary way, when the colour will show through the gold, gaining a
lustre and richness it would not otherwise have.
Footnote 5:
The process of leather cutting and embossing is briefly as follows.
The design is first drawn on paper, then transferred to tracing paper
and traced through from this on to the leather, which is shoe-calf
prepared for the purpose as to quality and thickness. The process is
very much like beaten and chased silver work, except that the soft
leather has to be reinforced at the back with a cement, and while this
cement is hardening the front has to be modelled. It is a mistake to
suppose that this work is of a delicate nature. If the design is
fairly evenly distributed over the decorated space, handling and the
slight friction a well-bound book is subject to in the course of time
enhance its appearance. Again, by tracing and cutting the design
without embossing it a different surface is obtained, while the
application of gold tooling and that of various colour tints are
additions of treatment that give considerable scope to the finisher.
Footnote 6:
The author wishes to acknowledge permission, which she has received
from _The Printing Art_, to print in this country this last chapter,
which first appeared in that periodical.
Printed by T. AND A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh
University Press
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Re-indexed footnotes using numbers and collected together at the end
of the last chapter.
4. Corrected the first two items in the Erratum. The last item was left
unchanged.
5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Modern bookbindings: Their design and decoration" ***
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