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.

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.

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.

40. Bound by Mercier.

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.

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.

43. Bound by Ruban.

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.

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.

46. Bound by Carayon.

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.

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.

49. Bound by Chambolle.

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.

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.

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.’

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.

54. Bound by Canape.

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.

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.

57. Bound by Kieffer.

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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. Moved some illustrations several pages to prevent them from breaking paragraphs. Altered the links in the table of illustrations accordingly.