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+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #68786 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/68786)
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of Modern bookbindings, by S. T. Prideaux
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: Modern bookbindings
-       Their design and decoration
-
-Author: S. T. Prideaux
-
-Release Date: August 18, 2022 [eBook #68786]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading
-             Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
-             images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN BOOKBINDINGS ***
-
-
-
-
-
-                          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_.
-
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-  <body>   
-<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Modern bookbindings, by S. T. Prideaux</p>
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
-at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
-are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
-country where you are located before using this eBook.
-</div>
-
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Modern bookbindings</p>
-<p style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:1em;'>Their design and decoration</p>
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: S. T. Prideaux</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: August 18, 2022 [eBook #68786]</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
-  <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</p>
-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN BOOKBINDINGS ***</div>
-
-<div class='tnotes covernote'>
-
-<p class='c000'><strong>Transcriber’s Note:</strong></p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter ph1'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-<div class='nf-center c001'>
-    <div>MODERN BOOKBINDINGS</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div id='I'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_001.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>1. <span class='sc'>Bound by Zaehnsdorf.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='titlepage'>
-
-<div>
-  <h1 class='c002'>MODERN BOOKBINDINGS<br /> <span class='xlarge'>THEIR DESIGN AND DECORATION</span></h1>
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-<div class='nf-center c003'>
-    <div>BY</div>
-    <div><span class='large'>S. T. PRIDEAUX</span></div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div  class='figcenter id002'>
-<img src='images/i_title.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-  <div class='nf-center'>
-    <div>NEW YORK</div>
-    <div><span class='large'>E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY</span></div>
-    <div>1906</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-<div class='nf-center c001'>
-    <div><span class='small'>Edinburgh: <span class='sc'>T. and A. Constable</span>, Printers to His Majesty</span></div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_v'>v</span>
-  <h2 class='c004'>CONTENTS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<table class='table0'>
-  <tr>
-    <th class='c005'></th>
-    <th class='c006'><span class='small'>PAGE</span></th>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Modern English Binding</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#Page_3'>3</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Modern French Binding</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#Page_59'>59</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Edition Binding</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#Page_105'>105</a></td>
-  </tr>
-</table>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_vii'>vii</span>
-  <h2 class='c004'>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<table class='table0'>
-  <tr>
-    <th class='c007'><span class='small'>PLATE</span></th>
-    <th class='c008'>&#160;</th>
-    <th class='c006'>&#160;</th>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#I'>I</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>Bound by Zaehnsdorf</span>—<em>Frontispiece</em></td>
-    <td class='c006'>&#160;</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <th class='c007'></th>
-    <th class='c008'>&#160;</th>
-    <th class='c006'><span class='small'>AT PAGE</span></th>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#II'>II</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>6</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#III'>III</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>6</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#IV'>IV</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Rivière</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>10</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#V'>V</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>10</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#VI'>VI</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Morrell</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>14</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#VII'>VII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>16</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#VIII'>VIII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>16</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#IX'>IX</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>De Coverly</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>18</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#X'>X</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Fazakerly</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>20</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XI'>XI</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>20</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XII'>XII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Chivers</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>26</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XIII'>XIII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>26</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_viii'>viii</span><span class='fss'><a href='#XIV'>XIV</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>the Oxford University Press</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>30</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XV'>XV</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>34</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XVI'>XVI</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>34</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XVII'>XVII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>the Guild of Handicraft</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>38</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XVIII'>XVIII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Douglas Cockerell</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>40</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XIX'>XIX</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>40</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XX'>XX</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>F. Sangorski and G. Sutcliffe</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>42</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXI'>XXI</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>De Sauty</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>44</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXII'>XXII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>44</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXIII'>XXIII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Miss Adams</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>46</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXIV'>XXIV</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Miss MacColl</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>48</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXV'>XXV</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Miss Alice Pattinson</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>48</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXVI'>XXVI</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Miss Maude Nathan</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>50</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXVII'>XXVII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Miss Woolrich</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>52</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXVIII'>XXVIII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Miss Philpot</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>54</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXIX'>XXIX</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Marius Michel</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>60</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXX'>XXX</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>62</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXXI'>XXXI</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>62</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_ix'>ix</span><span class='fss'><a href='#XXXII'>XXXII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Léon Gruel</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>64</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXXIII'>XXXIII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>68</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXXIV'>XXXIV</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>68</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXXV'>XXXV</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>72</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXXVI'>XXXVI</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>72</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXXVII'>XXXVII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Mercier</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>76</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXXVIII'>XXXVIII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>80</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XXXIX'>XXXIX</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>82</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XL'>XL</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>84</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XLI'>XLI</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>84</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XLII'>XLII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Ruban</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>88</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XLIII'>XLIII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>92</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XLIV'>XLIV</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>92</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XLV'>XLV</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Carayon</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>94</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XLVI'>XLVI</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>96</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XLVII'>XLVII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>96</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XLVIII'>XLVIII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Chambolle</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>98</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#XLIX'>XLIX</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>106</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#L'>L</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>106</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_x'>x</span><span class='fss'><a href='#LI'>LI</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Canape</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>108</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#LII'>LII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>112</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#LIII'>LIII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>116</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#LIV'>LIV</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>120</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#LV'>LV</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>120</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#LVI'>LVI</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ <span class='sc'>Kieffer</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'>124</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#LVII'>LVII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>128</td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c007'><span class='fss'><a href='#LVIII'>LVIII</a>.</span></td>
-    <td class='c008'>„ „</td>
-    <td class='c006'>128</td>
-  </tr>
-</table>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_xi'>xi</span>
-  <h2 id='ERRATUM' class='c004'>ERRATUM</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c010'><em>For</em> “Revière” <em>read</em> “Rivière” in List of Illustrations.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'><em>For</em> “Morell” <em>read</em> “Morrell” throughout.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>The address of the Oxford University Press is still Amen
-Corner, E.C., and <em>not</em> St. Dunstan’s House, Fetter Lane, as
-stated on page <a href='#Page_35'>35</a>.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span>
-  <h2 class='c004'>MODERN ENGLISH BINDING</h2>
-</div>
-
-<h3 class='c012'>I</h3>
-
-<p class='c013'>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_4'>4</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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.</p>
-<div id='II'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_002.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>2. <span class='sc'>Bound by Zaehnsdorf.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='III'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_003.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>3. <span class='sc'>Bound by Zaehnsdorf.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>of Henry <span class='fss'>VIII.</span>, 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>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 <span class='fss'>II.</span> to the time of Roger Payne there
-are no names associated with any bindings
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>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.</p>
-<div id='IV'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_004.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>4. <span class='sc'>Bound by Rivière.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='V'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_005.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>5. <span class='sc'>Bound by Rivière.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>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.</p>
-<div id='VI'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_006.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>6. <span class='sc'>Bound by Morrell.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>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.<a id='r1'></a><a href='#f1' class='c014'><sup>[1]</sup></a> Ask any professed
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>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.<a id='r2'></a><a href='#f2' class='c014'><sup>[2]</sup></a>
-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.</p>
-<div id='VII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_007.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>7. <span class='sc'>Bound by Morrell.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='VIII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_008.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>8. <span class='sc'>Bound by Morrell.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>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.</p>
-<div id='IX'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_009.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>9. <span class='sc'>Bound by de Coverly.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>
-  <h3 class='c015'>II</h3>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c013'>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.</p>
-<div id='X'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_010.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>10. <span class='sc'>Bound by Fazakerly.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='XI'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_011.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>11. <span class='sc'>Bound by Fazakerly.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>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,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>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.<a id='r3'></a><a href='#f3' class='c014'><sup>[3]</sup></a> Some very fine specimens of
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>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.<a id='r4'></a><a href='#f4' class='c014'><sup>[4]</sup></a></p>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>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.</p>
-<div id='XII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_012.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>12. <span class='sc'>Bound by Chivers.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='XIII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_013.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>13. <span class='sc'>Bound by Chivers.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>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,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>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.</p>
-<div id='XIV'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_014.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>14. <span class='sc'>Bound by the Oxford University Press</span>.</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>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 <span class='fss'>III</span>., 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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.<a id='r5'></a><a href='#f5' class='c014'><sup>[5]</sup></a> Some of the ‘cuir
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>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 <cite>Pantheologia</cite>
-by Rainesius de Pisa, a folio dated
-about 1475, one of the Museum books just
-mentioned.</p>
-<div id='XV'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_015.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>15. <span class='sc'>Bound by the Oxford University Press</span>.</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='XVI'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_016.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>16. <span class='sc'>Bound by the Oxford University Press</span>.</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>inlays; they are made by the more artistic
-among the workmen, and speak highly
-for the level of taste attained in the
-bindery.</p>
-<div id='XVII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_017.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>17. <span class='sc'>Bound by the Guild of Handicraft.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>
-  <h3 class='c015'>III</h3>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c013'>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 <cite>British Bookmaker</cite>, a trade
-journal no longer in existence, the <cite>English
-Illustrated Magazine</cite>, the <cite>Fortnightly Review</cite>,
-testify to his former willingness that
-his work should be known and appreciated.
-He has also been one of the main supporters
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>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 <cite>Industrial Ideals</cite>, 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>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.</p>
-<div id='XVIII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_018.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>18. <span class='sc'>Bound by Douglas Cockerell.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='XIX'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_019.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>19. <span class='sc'>Bound by Douglas Cockerell.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-<div id='XX'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_020.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>20. <span class='sc'>Bound by F. Sangorski and G. Sutcliffe.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>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, 67<span class='fss'>A</span> 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>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.</p>
-<div id='XXI'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_021.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>21. <span class='sc'>Bound by de Sauty.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='XXII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_022.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>22. <span class='sc'>Bound by de Sauty.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>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.</p>
-<div id='XXIII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_023.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>23. <span class='sc'>Bound by Miss Adams.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>Mr. de Sauty is another young binder,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>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.</p>
-<div id='XXIV'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_024.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>24. <span class='sc'>Bound by Miss MacColl.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='XXV'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_025.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>25. <span class='sc'>Bound by Miss Alice Pattinson.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>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,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>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.</p>
-<div id='XXVI'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_026.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>26. <span class='sc'>Bound by Miss Maude Nathan.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>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 <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">corpora vile</span></i> 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>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.</p>
-<div id='XXVII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_027.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>27. <span class='sc'>Bound by Miss Woolrich.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-<div id='XXVIII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_028.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>28. <span class='sc'>Bound by Miss Philpot.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>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.</p>
-<div id='XXIX'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_029.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>29. <span class='sc'>Bound by Marius Michel.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>
-  <h2 class='c004'>MODERN FRENCH BINDING</h2>
-</div>
-
-<h3 class='c012'>I</h3>
-
-<p class='c013'>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>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,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>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—</p>
-<div id='XXX'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_030.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>30. <span class='sc'>Bound by Marius Michel.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='XXXI'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_031.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>31. <span class='sc'>Bound by Marius Michel.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c016'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line in16'><span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">VÉLIN DORÉ</span></div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Vieux maître relieur, l’or que tu ciselas</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Au dos du livre et dans l’épaisseur de la tranche</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">N’a plus, malgré les fers poussés d’une main franche</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">La rutilante ardeur de ses premiers éclats.</span></div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Les chiffres enlacés que liait l’entrelacs</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">S’effacent chaque jour de la peau fine et blanche;</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">A peine si mes yeux peuvent suivre la branche</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">De lierre que tu fis serpenter sur les plats.</span></div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mais cet ivoire souple et presque diaphane,</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Marguerite, Marie, ou peut-être Diane,</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">De leurs doigts amoureux l’ont jadis caressé;</span></div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Et ce vélin pâli que dora Clovis Éve</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Évoque, je ne sais par quel charme passé,</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">L’âme de leur parfum et l’ombre de leur rêve.</span></div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='XXXII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_032.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>32. <span class='sc'>Bound by Léon Gruel.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_64'>64</span>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 <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">L’ornamentation des reliures modernes</span></cite>
-showed clearly the direction taken by the
-modern school; while the sumptuous book,
-<cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">La reliure du XIX siècle</span></cite>, by Henri Béraldi,
-who is both a patron and collector of distinction,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>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—<cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">La Reliure</span></cite>, which is the organ of
-the Chambre Syndicale, an association of
-master binders founded by M. Gruel; and
-<cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Le Relieur</span></cite>, 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>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.</p>
-<div id='XXXIII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_033.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>33. <span class='sc'>Bound by Léon Gruel.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='XXXIV'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_034.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>34. <span class='sc'>Bound by Léon Gruel.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>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.</p>
-<div id='XXXV'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_035.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>35. <span class='sc'>Bound By Léon Gruel.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='XXXVI'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_036.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>36. <span class='sc'>Bound by Léon Gruel.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span>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 <cite>Eugénie
-Grandet</cite> with the drawings of Dagnan engraved
-by Le Rat, <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Monsieur, Madame et
-Bébé</span></cite>, 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span>when single copies were specially illustrated
-for individual collectors, such as the <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Fleurs
-du Mal</span></cite>, which Paul Gallimond had ornamented
-with marginal notes by Rodin, and
-<cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Les Trois Mousquetaires</span></cite> with water-colour
-sketches by Maurice Leloir. The original
-drawings for <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Notre Dame de Paris</span></cite> by Luc
-Olivier Merson were bought for 20,000 francs
-in the open market, while those for <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Les
-Trois Mousquetaires</span></cite> and <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Manon Lescaut</span></cite>
-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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_74'>74</span>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 <span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr"><cite>L’art d’aimer les livres et de les
-connaître</cite>, <cite>Connaissances nécessaires à un
-bibliophile</cite>, <cite>Les livres modernes qu’il convient
-d’acquérir</cite>, <cite>De la reliure, examples à imiter
-ou à rejeter</cite></span>, not to mention monthly reviews
-such as <span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr"><cite>Le Livre Moderne</cite>, <cite>L’Art et l’Idée</cite>,
-<cite>Le Livre et l’Image</cite></span>, and the like.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>Grolier took the best books he could find,
-and put them into the best bindings he could
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_76'>76</span>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 <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">jeu de filets</span></i>, 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.</p>
-<div id='XXXVII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_037.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>37. <span class='sc'>Bound by Mercier.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>
-  <h3 class='c015'>II</h3>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c013'>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>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 <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">le flore stylisé</span></i>, 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.</p>
-<div id='XXXVIII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_038.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>38. <span class='sc'>Bound by Mercier.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>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
-<i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">l’art nouveau</span></i>, 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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.</p>
-<div id='XXXIX'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_039.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>39. <span class='sc'>Bound by Mercier.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>M. Gruel, whose efforts were directed
-towards stemming the tide of eccentricity
-associated with <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">l’art nouveau</span></i>, 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>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
-<i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">reliures d’affiche</span></i>, 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>for the solitary copy on Japan paper of
-<cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Paysages Parisiens</span></cite>, 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 <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">le cuir incisé</span></i>.
-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.</p>
-<div id='XL'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_040.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>40. <span class='sc'>Bound by Mercier.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='XLI'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_041.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>41. <span class='sc'>Bound by Mercier.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>To turn now from this brief account of
-the recent developments of French binding
-to the Galliera exhibition.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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, <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Manuel historique
-et bibliographique de l’amateur de
-reliures</span></cite>, a second instalment of which appeared
-in 1904. The characteristic of the
-business has always been the production
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>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 <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">le cuir incisé</span></i>, he has made
-especially his own, and he treats it in an
-entirely different manner to that of Marius.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>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.</p>
-<div id='XLII'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_042.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>42. <span class='sc'>Bound by Ruban.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>Émile Mercier has the reputation of being
-the finest gilder in Paris—<i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">l’artiste impeccable</span></i>,
-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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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 <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">relieurs-doreurs</span></i>, 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>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 <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">corps
-d’ouvrage</span></i>, 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.</p>
-<div id='XLIII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_043.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>43. <span class='sc'>Bound by Ruban.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='XLIV'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_044.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>44. <span class='sc'>Bound by Ruban.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>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 <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">cuir ciselé</span></i>, in which
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>he quickly attained great skill, doing forty
-copies alone, with as many different designs
-of <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">L’histoire des quatre fils d’Aymon</span></cite>, 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.</p>
-<div id='XLV'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_045.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>45. <span class='sc'>Bound by Carayon.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>The reputation of M. Carayon is based
-upon <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">le cartonnage</span></i>, 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 <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">cartonnage
-à la Bradel</span></i> 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>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 <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">le genre Bradel</span></i>. 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.</p>
-<div id='XLVI'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_046.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>46. <span class='sc'>Bound by Carayon.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='XLVII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_047.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>47. <span class='sc'>Bound by Carayon.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>Canape is a young binder of increasing reputation.
-At present he seems to specialize
-in what is called <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">la gaufrure à froid</span></i>, in
-which different-coloured moroccos are tooled
-without gold—a style which has been much
-in favour of late years, and in which Marius
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>M. Pierre Roche has struck a new note
-in what he calls <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">la reliure églomisée</span></i>. 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.</p>
-<div id='XLVIII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_048.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>48. <span class='sc'>Bound by Chambolle.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>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.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>Some day even the best binders may cease
-to support <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">l’art nouveau</span></i> 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.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>
-  <h2 class='c004'>EDITION BINDING<a id='r6'></a><a href='#f6' class='c014'><sup>[6]</sup></a></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c010'>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,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>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.</p>
-<div id='XLIX'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_049.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>49. <span class='sc'>Bound by Chambolle.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='L'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_050.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>50. <span class='sc'>Bound by Chambolle.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>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.</p>
-<div id='LI'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_051.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>51. <span class='sc'>Bound by Canape.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>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 <cite>British
-Classics</cite> (1818). It was very rarely that
-anything but a dull colour was used, though
-Whittingham’s <cite>British Poets</cite> (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 <cite>The
-Keepsake</cite>, <cite>The Bijou</cite>, <cite>Friendship’s Offering</cite>,
-<cite>The Book of Beauty</cite>, <cite>The Landscape Annual</cite>,
-and so on. Such books commanded a large
-sale, even in those days; and a writer on
-the subject, in the first volume of <cite>The
-Bookbinder</cite>, mentions Finden’s <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Tableaux</span></cite>,
-two thousand imperial quarto volumes, full
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>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 <cite>Waverley
-Novels</cite>. The <cite>Novels and Tales</cite>, in twelve
-volumes, appeared in 1819 in pink paper,
-with white labels; the <cite>Historical Romances</cite>,
-in six volumes, followed in 1822, in blue
-paper, with pink cloth back and white
-paper labels; and <cite>Novels and Romances</cite> 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>In the <cite>Bookseller</cite> 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>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.</p>
-<div id='LII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_052.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>52. <span class='sc'>Bound by Canape.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>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 <cite>The Penny Cyclopædia</cite> or
-Knight’s <cite>Pictorial England</cite>, 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>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 <cite>Art Journal</cite>,
-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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>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 <cite>Bible Points</cite>, 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.’</p>
-<div id='LIII'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_053.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>53. <span class='sc'>Bound by Canape.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>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 <cite>Legends of the Madonna</cite>
-and <cite>Legends of the Monastic Orders</cite>. 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>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 <cite>In Our
-Town</cite>, <cite>Her Majesty’s Minister</cite>, <cite>Mrs. Wiggs
-of the Cabbage Patch</cite>, <cite>The Hebrew</cite>, and
-many others of the same firm, one of whose
-members gives special attention to the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>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 <cite>The Romance of the Colorado River</cite>,
-<cite>Puerto Rican</cite>, <cite>Lights of Childhood</cite>, and <cite>The
-Romance of the Renaissance Chateaux</cite>, 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 <cite>Twenty-Six
-Historic Ships</cite>, 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>different ways, which naturally give very
-varied results in the blocking-press.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>Messrs. Gay and Bird issue some effective
-colour printing on <cite>In South Africa with
-Buller</cite>, and an attractive example of a loch
-and mountain scene in four sombre colours
-on <cite>The Story of Gösta Berling</cite>. 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. <cite>Paris in its Splendour</cite>, 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
-<cite>Walden</cite>, 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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>This, then, is the position of cloth binding
-at the present time as shown by the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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.</p>
-<div id='LIV'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_054.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>54. <span class='sc'>Bound by Canape.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='LV'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_055.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>55. <span class='sc'>Bound by Canape.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>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,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>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 <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Marques Typographiques</span></cite> 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>extant to my knowledge in England, though
-the heraldic blocks used on books in the
-reigns of Henry <span class='fss'>VII.</span> and Henry <span class='fss'>VIII.</span> 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.</p>
-<div id='LVI'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_056.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>56. <span class='sc'>Bound by Kieffer.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>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 <cite>Bookbindings and
-Rubbings of Bindings in the National Art
-Library of South Kensington Museum</cite>, 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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>indicated by initials incorporated in the
-design, their <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">provenance</span></i> 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:—</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>4. The heraldic panels decorated with
-royal badges, used in England during the
-reigns of Henry <span class='fss'>VII.</span> and Henry <span class='fss'>VIII.</span></p>
-
-<p class='c011'>5. The panel stamps of a purely decorative
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>I would sum up, in conclusion, the points
-I have desired to emphasize, and which are
-as follows:—</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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.</p>
-<div id='LVII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_057.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>57. <span class='sc'>Bound by Kieffer.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='LVIII'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_058.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>58. <span class='sc'>Bound by Kieffer.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>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.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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 <cite>Book of Kells</cite> and <cite>Early Christian Art
-in Ireland</cite>, by Margaret Stokes, are full
-of illustrations in a field strangely little
-explored by the pattern maker of to-day.</p>
-
-<p class='c011'>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
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>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.</p>
-
-<hr class='c017' />
-<div class='footnote' id='f1'>
-<p class='c011'><a href='#r1'>1</a>. 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.</p>
-</div>
-<div class='footnote' id='f2'>
-<p class='c011'><a href='#r2'>2</a>. 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.</p>
-</div>
-<div class='footnote' id='f3'>
-<p class='c011'><a href='#r3'>3</a>. 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.</p>
-</div>
-<div class='footnote' id='f4'>
-<p class='c011'><a href='#r4'>4</a>. 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.</p>
-</div>
-<div class='footnote' id='f5'>
-<p class='c011'><a href='#r5'>5</a>. 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.</p>
-</div>
-<div class='footnote' id='f6'>
-<p class='c011'><a href='#r6'>6</a>. The author wishes to acknowledge permission, which she
-has received from <cite>The Printing Art</cite>, to print in this country
-this last chapter, which first appeared in that periodical.</p>
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-<div class='nf-center c003'>
-    <div><span class='small'>Printed by <span class='sc'>T. and A. Constable</span>, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press</span></div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='pbb'>
- <hr class='pb c018' />
-</div>
-<div class='tnotes x-ebookmaker'>
-
-<div class='chapter ph2'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-<div class='nf-center c001'>
-    <div>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
- <ol class='ol_1 c003'>
-    <li>Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
-
-    </li>
-    <li>Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
-
-    </li>
-    <li>Re-indexed footnotes using numbers and collected together at the end of the last 
-    chapter.
-
-    </li>
-    <li>Corrected the first two items in the <a href='#ERRATUM'>Erratum</a>.  The last item was left 
-    unchanged.
-
-    </li>
-    <li>Moved some illustrations several pages to prevent them from breaking paragraphs.  
-    Altered the links in the table of illustrations accordingly.
-
-    </li>
-  </ol>
-
-</div>
-
-<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN BOOKBINDINGS ***</div>
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