The binding of a book is its most
conspicuous feature, the part which forms its introduction
to the public and by which too often it is judged
and valued; yet the binding is not an integral portion
of the volume. It may be changed many times without
essentially changing the book; but if the printed
pages are changed, even for others identical to the
eye, the book becomes another copy. The binding
is, therefore, a part of a book’s environment,
though the most intimate part, like our own clothing,
to which, indeed, it bears a curious resemblance in
its purpose and its perversions.

Human clothing is for protection and
adornment. That of a book involves two other
demands mutually so contradictory that bookbinding
has always offered a most attractive challenge to
the skill of the handicraftsman. The first demand
is that the book when closed shall form a well-squared
and virtually solid block, like the rectangle of wood
from which its first predecessors were split, and
shall be able to stand alone, unsupported. The
second demand is that this same object, when open,
shall lie flat at any point and display all its leaves
in turn as fully, and far more conveniently, than
if they had never been fastened together. Whatever
may be true of other clothing, it is eminently true
of a book’s that the part which really counts
is the part which is never seen. Only the ornamental
portion of a book’s covering is exposed.
The portions which protect the book and render it
at once firm and flexible are out of sight and unheeded
by the ordinary reader. Hence the existence of
so much bookbinding that is apparently good and essentially
bad, and hence the perpetual timeliness of attempts
like that of the present chapter, to point out what
binding is and should be. The processes in bookbinding
by which its different ends of utility and ornament
are achieved are known under the two heads of Forwarding
and Finishing.

Forwarding includes many processes,
literally “all but the finishing.”
It is to forwarding that a book owes its shapeliness,
its firmness, its flexibility, and its durability.
Forwarding takes the unfolded and unarranged sheets
as delivered by the printer and transforms them into
a book complete in all but its outermost covering
of cloth or leather. The first process is to
fold the sheets and reduce their strange medley of
page numbers to an orderly succession. This is
assuming that there is a whole edition to be bound.
If it consists of a thousand copies, then there will
be a certain number of piles of folded sheets, each
containing a thousand copies of the same pages printed
in groups, let us say, of sixteen each. These
groups of pages are called sections or signatures.
They are now rearranged, or gathered, into a thousand
piles, each containing the signatures that belong
to one book. The edition is thus separated into
its thousand books, which the collator goes over to
see that each is perfect. Let us follow the fortunes
of a single one. It is not much of a book to
look at, being rather a puffy heap of paper, but pressing,
rolling, or beating soon reduces it to normal dimensions,
and it is then carried forward to the important process
of sewing. This is the very heart of the whole
work. If the book is badly sewed, it will be
badly bound, though a thousand dollars were to be spent
upon the decoration of its covering. There is
only one best method of sewing, and that is around
raised cords, in the way followed by the earliest
binders. There are modern machine methods that
are very good, but they are only cheap substitutes
for the best. The cords must be of good, long-fibered
hemp, and the thread of the best quality and the right
size drawn to the right degree of tension without
missing a sheet. After the sewing the end papers
are put in place, the back is glued and rounded, and
the mill boards are fitted. Into these last the
ends of the cords are laced and hammered. The
book is then pressed to set its shape, being left
in the press for some days or even weeks. After
it is taken out, if the edges are to be treated, they
are trimmed and then gilded, marbled, sprinkled, or
otherwise decorated. The head band for
which many French binders substitute a fold in the
leather is now added. It was formerly
twisted as the book was sewn, but at present is too
often bought ready-made and simply glued on.
The book is now forwarded.

The business of the finisher is to
cover and protect the work already done on the book,
but in such a way as not to interfere with the strength
and flexibility that have been gained, and, finally,
to add such decoration as may be artistically demanded
or within the means of the purchaser. If leather
is employed, it must be carefully shaved to give an
easily opening hinge, yet not enough to weaken it unnecessarily.
This is a most important process and one that must
be left largely to the good faith of the binder.
If he is unworthy of confidence, his mistakes may
long escape notice, but, though buried, they are doomed
to an inglorious resurrection, albeit he may count
on a sufficient lapse of time to protect himself.

The next and last process of finishing
is that of the decorator, whose work passes out of
the sphere of handicraft into that of art. His
problem is no easy one; it is to take a surface of
great beauty in itself, as of calf or morocco, and
so treat it as to increase its beauty. Too often,
after he has done his utmost, the surface is less
attractive to the eye than it was at the beginning.
He, therefore, has a task quite different from that
of the painter or sculptor, whose materials are not
at the outset attractive. This condition is so
strongly felt that many booklovers leave their bindings
untooled, preferring the rich sensuous beauty and
depth of color in a choice piece of leather to any
effect of gilding or inlaying. This initial beauty
of the undecorated book does not, however, form an
impossible challenge, as witness the work of the Eves,
Le Gascon, and the binders of such famous collectors
as Grolier and de Thou.

It may be well to consider more particularly
what the problem of the book decorator is. Though
perfectly obvious to the eye and clearly illustrated
by the work of the masters, it has been sometimes lost
sight of by recent binders. It is, in a word,
flat decoration. In the first place he has a
surface to work upon that is large enough to allow
strength of treatment, yet small enough to admit delicacy;
then, whatever in beautiful effects of setting, relief,
harmony, and contrast can be brought about by blind
tooling, gilding, and inlaying, or by rubbing the
surface as in crushed levant, or variegating it as
in “tree” or marbled calf, all this he
can command. He has control of an infinite variety
of forms in tooling; he has only to use them with taste
and skill. There is practically no limit to the
amount of work that he can put into the binding of
a single book, provided that every additional stroke
is an additional beauty. He may sow the leather
with minute ornament like Mearne, or set it off with
a few significant lines like Aldus or Roger Payne;
all depends upon the treatment. If he is a master,
the end will crown the work; if not, then he should
have stopped with simple lettering and have left the
demands of beauty to be satisfied by the undecorated
leather. Above all, let every decorator stick
to flat ornament. The moment that he ventures
into the third dimension, or perspective, that moment
he invades the province of the draftsman or painter.
One does not care to walk over a rug or carpet that
displays a scene in perspective, neither does one
wish to gaze into a landscape wrought upon the cover
of a book, only to have the illusion of depth dispelled
upon opening the volume. Embossing is, to be sure,
a literal not a pictorial invasion of the third dimension,
but its intrusion into that dimension is very slight
and involves no cheating of the eye. It has now
practically gone out of use, as has the heavy medieval
ornamentation of studs or jewels. In cloth covers,
which are confessedly edition work and machine made,
the rules of ornament need not be so sharply enforced.
Here embossing still flourishes to some extent.
But the decorative problem is essentially the same
in cloth as in leather binding, and the best design
will be one that triumphs within the conditions, not
outside them. The machines and the division of
labor have made sad havoc with binding as a craft.
The men in America, at least, who are masters of every
process and of all the skill and cunning of the early
binders are few, and their thinning ranks are not being
filled. Will bookbinding, in spite of a high economic
demand, share the fate that has overtaken engraving,
or shall we have a renascence of this fascinating
handicraft and delightful art, to take its name from
the present era?

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