Vellum—Calf—Pig skin—Sheep skin—Goat skin—Seal skin, etc.
Prepared skins of animals have been the most generally used of all materials for covering bindings of manuscripts or printed books. Leather is tanned skin, and the hair is generally removed. Bindings that have the hair still left on the leather are usually of an elementary kind and are intended to be carried about in pockets. They are not common. Vellum (calf skin), and parchment (sheep skin), are not tanned, but are prepared with lime and are white. Not uncommonly, especially in Germany, other skins were so prepared. Pig skin, deer skin, goat skin, horse skin, and donkey skin were all “vellumised,” and are all very strong and take excellent impressions in blind.
It is likely enough that vellum was used for the first covering of books, simply enclosing the sections, the ends of the bands drawn in, without boards. Such bindings are excellent for thin books, and they were successfully re-introduced in recent times by William Morris, always used with ties, as otherwise the vellum crinkles up.
“Vellum” bindings made now, unless specially ordered, are only ordinary bindings in boards covered with vellum. Vellum is strong, but has some disadvantages. Although gold looks beautiful upon vellum it is difficult to work, and title labels do not stick to it well. If kept near the light it turns to something very like egg-shell and chips off. This defect was known to librarians in past times, and they met it by keeping their vellum books backs inwards, the forages outwards. Many instances of this manner of keeping vellum books occur in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and they generally have their old pressmarks, and sometimes titles, written across the top of the forage. Old vellum was cut thick, and seldom ornamented, and if kept dry in the dark it is an excellent material. The same peculiarities exist in the case of parchment, which is, however, a very inferior skin, thinner, weaker, and not so good looking. Parchment is frequently described, and used, as vellum, and few purchasers know the difference; but the market value of parchment is less than half that of vellum. Vellum is particularly well suited for bindings kept in large towns, as dust does not stick to it, and it is easily cleaned. In time it assumes a creamy colour that is delightful. From the late sixteenth century until now, vellum stained green has been commonly used in England.
White vellumised leather, probably deer skin, has always been much liked in England from the time of Henry VIII., many of whose books were bound in this material: among them a copy of Elyot’s “Image of Governance,” printed in London in 1541, which is one of the first books with gold tooling upon it done in this country. Several books were bound in the same thick white leather for the other Tudor sovereigns, as well as for some of their richer subjects, but in the seventeenth century limp vellum once more asserted its sway and became very popular in England for highly valued books. The brilliancy of the gilding upon some of these bindings is quite wonderful; it is certainly doubtful if any modern finishers could equal the technical beauty of the work. Then in the eighteenth century, vellum, though still much esteemed, only took its place as a covering for boards, and once more, in the nineteenth century, Morris restored it to its proper use as a limp binding.
In 1785, James Edwards of Halifax patented a way of rendering vellum transparent, so that paintings underneath it showed through, and he used it with much success. The process has been revived of late years in England.
The Dutch binders have always liked vellum, but it is used with boards and never limp. Dutch vellum bindings are usually coloured, not well done, but at a distance they look decorative, and were certainly very popular. They often have clasps and painted edges.
A few bindings have been made in England, France, and Holland, covered with pierced vellum, showing coloured silk underneath. They are not very satisfactory and soon get out of order.
After vellum comes calf, the outer skin of the same animal, tanned. Calf is a good second, and I think altogether, up to about the end of the eighteenth century, that it has been more used than any other leather. The main difference between old calf and modern calf is that the old leather was properly tanned with oak bark or sumach, and cut thick, whereas modern calf used for binding is abominably tanned, quickly and disastrously, and cut thin. There is no better leather than old calf, and it was used universally; England, France, Germany, and Italy all liked it; it was delightful to decorate, either in blind or gilt, and it mellowed with age to a rich mahogany brown. Italian and sixteenth century English binders stained their fillets black, and several of these calf bindings, richly gilded, and with black fillets, are quite splendid, in perfect taste.
The surface of calf is smooth, and it is very sensitive to all sorts of stains.