A decorative treatment not yet mentioned is applied to the covers of some books, which are bound in elegant full calf. To give to this leather the elegant finish known as "tree-calf binding", it is first washed with glaire or albumen. The boards of the book are then bent to a convex shape, and water sprinkled over, until it runs down from the centre in many little branches or rivulets. While running, a solution of copperas is sprinkled on, and carried along the branches which radiate from the central trunk, producing the dark-mottled colored effect which resembles, more or less nearly, a tree with its spreading branches.
To make the book beautiful should be the united aim of all who are concerned in its manufacture—the paper-maker, the printer, and the book-binder. While utility comes first in the art of book-making for libraries, yet neatness and even elegance should always be united with it. An ill-forwarded book, or a badly finished one, presents a clumsy, unattractive look to the eye; while an evenly made piece of work, and a careful and tasteful ornamentation in the gilding, attract every discerning reader by their beauty. One writer upon book-binding terms the forwarder of the book an artizan, and the finisher an artist; but both should have the true artist's taste, in order to produce the work that shall commend itself by intrinsic excellence. The form and shape of the book depend wholly, indeed, on the forwarder.
We are told that the great beauty of the Grolier bindings lay in the lavish and tasteful adornment of the sides. In fact, much depends upon the design, in every piece of decorative work. The pretty scroll patterns, the interlaced figures, the delicate tracery, the circles, rosettes, and stars, the lovely arabesques, the flowers and leaves borrowed from the floral kingdom, the geometric lines, the embroidered borders, like fine lace-work,—all these lend their separate individual charms to the finish of the varied specimens of the binder's art. There are some books that look as brilliant as jewels in their rich, lustrous adornment, the design sometimes powdered with gold points and stars. Some gems of art are lined with rich colored leather in the inside covers, which are stamped and figured in gold. This is termed "doublé" by the French. Some have their edges gilded over marbling, a refinement of beauty which adds richness to the work, the marble design showing through the brilliant gold, when the edge is turned. Others have pictorial designs drawn on the edges, which are then gilded over the pictures. This complex style of gilding, the French term gaufré. It was formerly much in vogue, but is latterly out of fashion. Many gems of binding are adorned with fly-leaves of moire silk, or rich colored satin. Color, interspersed with gold in the finish of a book covering, heightens the effect. The morocco of the side-cover is sometimes cut, and inlaid with leather of a different color. Inlaying with morocco or kid is the richest style of decoration which the art has yet reached. Beautiful bindings have been in greater request during the past twenty years than ever before. There was a renaissance of the ancient styles of decoration in France, and the choice Grolier and Maioli patterns were revived with the general applause of the lovers of fine books.
In vivid contrast to these lovely specimens of the binder's art, are found innumerable bibliopegic horrors, on the shelves of countless libraries, public and private. Among these are to be reckoned most law books, clad in that dead monotony of ugliness, which Charles Dickens has described as "that under-done pie-crust cover, which is technically known as law calf." There are other uncouth and unwholesome specimens everywhere abroad, "whom Satan hath bound", to borrow Mr. Henry Stevens's witty application of a well-known Scripture text. Such repellant bindings are only fit to serve as models to be avoided by the librarian.
The binding that is executed by machinery is sometimes called "commercial binding". It is also known as "edition binding", because the whole edition of a book is bound in uniform style of cover. While the modern figured cloth binding originated in England, it has had its fullest development in the United States. Here, those ingenious and powerful machines which execute every branch of the folding and forwarding of a book, and even the finishing of the covers, with almost lightning speed, were mostly invented and applied. Very vivid is the contrast between the quiet, humdrum air of the old-fashioned bindery hand-work, and the ceaseless clang and roar of the machinery which turns out thousands of volumes in a day.
"Not as ours the books of old,
Things that steam can stamp and fold."
I believe that I failed to notice, among the varieties of material for book-bindings heretofore enumerated, some of the rarer and more singular styles. Thus, books have been bound in enamel, (richly variegated in color) in Persian silk, in seal-skin, in the skin of the rabbit, white-bear, crocodile, cat, dog, mole, tiger, otter, buffalo, wolf, and even rattle-snake. A favorite modern leather for purses and satchels, alligator-skin, has been also applied to the clothing of books. Many eccentric fancies have been exemplified in book-binding, but the acme of gruesome oddity has been reached by binding books in human skin, of which many examples are on record. It is perhaps three centuries old, but the first considerable instance of its use grew out of the horrors of the French Revolution. In England, the Bristol law library has several volumes bound in the skin of local criminals, flayed after execution, and specially tanned for the purpose. It is described as rather darker than vellum. A Russian poet is said to have bound his sonnets in human leather—his own skin—taken from a broken thigh—and the book he presented to the lady of his affections! Such ghoulish incidents as these afford curious though repulsive glimpses of the endless vagaries of human nature.
It is said that the invention of half-binding originated among the economists of Germany; and some wealthy bibliophiles have stigmatized this style of dressing books as "genteel poverty." But its utility and economy have been demonstrated too long to admit of any doubt that half-binding has come to stay; while, as we have seen, it is also capable of attractive aesthetic features. Mr. William Matthews, perhaps the foremost of American binders, said that "a book when neatly forwarded, and cleanly covered, is in a very satisfactory condition without any finishing or decorating." It was this same binder who exhibited at the New York World's Fair Exhibition of 1853, a copy of Owen Jones's Alhambra, bound by him in full Russia, inlaid with blue and red morocco, with gold tooling all executed by hand, taking six months to complete, and costing the binder no less than five hundred dollars.
Book lettering, or stamping the proper title on the back of the book, is a matter of the first importance. As the titles of most books are much too long to go on the back, a careful selection of the most distinctive words becomes necessary. Here the taste and judgment of the librarian come indispensably into play. To select the lettering of a book should never be left to the binder, because it is not his business, and because, in most cases, he will make a mistake somewhere in the matter. From want of care on this point, many libraries are filled with wrongly lettered books, misleading titles, and blunders as ludicrous as they are distressing. I have had to have thousands of volumes in the Library of Congress re-lettered. A copy of Lord Bacon's "Sylva Sylvarum", for example, was lettered "Verlum's Sylva"—because the sapient binder read on the title-page "By Baron Verulam", and it was not his business to find out that this was the title of honor which Bacon bore; so, by a compound blunder, he converted Verulam into Verlum, and gave the book to an unknown writer. This is perhaps an extreme case, but you will find many to match it. Another folio, Rochefort's History of the Caribby Islands, was lettered "Davies' Carriby Islands," because the title bore the statement "Rendered into English by John Davies." In another library, the great work of the naturalist, Buffon, was actually lettered "Buffoon's Natural History." Neither of these blunders was as bad as that of the owner of an elegant black-letter edition of a Latin classic, which was printed without title-page, like most fifteenth century books, and began at the top of the first leaf, in large letters—"HOC INCIPIT," signifying "This begins", followed by the title or subject of the book. The wiseacre who owned it had the book richly bound, and directed it to be lettered on the back—"Works of Hoc Incipit, Rome, 1490." This is a true story, and the hero of it might perhaps, on the strength of owning so many learned works, have passed for a philosopher, if he had not taken the pains to advertise himself as a blockhead.
Some of the commonest blunders are stamping on the back the translator's or the editor's name, instead of that of the author of the book; putting on adjectives instead of substantives for titles; modernizing ancient and characteristic spelling, found in the title, (the exact orthography of which should always be followed); mixing up the number and the case of Latin titles, and those in other foreign languages; leaving off entirely the name of the writer; and lettering periodicals by putting on the volume without the year, or the year, without the number of the volume. "No one but an idiot", said Mr. C. Walford to the London Librarians' Conference, "would send his books to the binder, without indicating the lettering he desires on the backs." The only safe-guard is for the librarian or owner to prescribe on a written slip in each volume, a title for every book, before it goes to the binder, who will be only too glad to have his own time saved—since time is money to him. I would not underrate the book-binders, who are a most worthy and intelligent class, numbering in their ranks men who are scholars as well as artists; but they are concerned chiefly with the mechanics and not with the metaphysics of their art, and moreover, they are not bound by that rigid rule which should govern the librarian—namely—to have no ignoramus about the premises.
