Calf is seen at its best when it is used to take impressions from panel stamps, but its beautiful surface and sensitiveness to stains of all kinds has made it a favourite ground for all sorts of fancy markings, most of which, however charming they may be at first, end by destroying the leather.
Russia leather is calf prepared with willow bark and scented with birch oil. It is a modern leather, and lasts badly, and is generally diced,—that is to say, covered all over with diagonal rulings. It was a favourite leather of Roger Payne’s. It is said that a book bound in Russia leather will last better if much used, and no doubt this is true, not only of Russia but of any other leather. As a rule leather bindings in libraries are starved; they get dry, and readily absorb animal oil from the human hand. The truth of this may be found in the fact that numbers of dictionaries and books of reference were preferentially bound in Russia leather some thirty or forty years ago, and whereas unused books bound at the same time in the same way now show rotting leather, the reference books which have been continually used are quite sound and supple.
Cow hide is like a magnified calf leather, and shows a slightly pitted surface. It is not often used, but is of much value for very large books that are worth full binding, as one piece of hide could be cut large enough, for instance, to full-bind the Skibbereen Eagle, one of the largest Irish newspapers. It would take three or four of the largest goat skins to do this, and it is always advisable to avoid joins, wherever possible, in a binding. But there is one drawback to the use of hide for binding: it is practically impossible to cut it smooth; however skilfully it may be pared, when it gets on the book it is always ridgy. This is, of course, not very important, but it militates against the use of hide except when absolutely necessary. For the rest, hide takes colour well, and it is a very handsome leather, and when it is finished simply with very broad gold fillets it is very ornamental.
Pig skin is perhaps the most familiar of all bookbinding leathers to the outside world, because saddles are made of it. It is a thick, rich leather, and, so to speak, full of life. It is not suitable for small books, but very good for large ones, and has been used in England off and on for a long time, but never very much. Charles Lewis executed some fine examples of his larger bindings in pig skin, but I think he never cared much for it.
Pig skin responds admirably to treatment with lime, the same method of preparation as used for vellum; and this white “vellumised” pig skin has always been the most favoured material for the covering of fine German books of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Many of these bindings are perfect in their way, covered all over with delicate roll stamps showing marvellous definition and clearness on the hard white surface.
Fine though all their impressions are, it cannot be denied that they are difficult to see; the impressions are shallow, and indeed the designs can often be more easily made out by help of a rubbing with heelball on soft white paper than by examining the binding itself.
Pig skin can be recognised by its smooth hard surface, strongly pitted with bristle holes. It is closely imitated in inferior leather, bristle holes and all, and when such imitation is actually on a book it is very difficult to detect, but if in skin form it can easily be recognised. In real pig skin the bristle holes penetrate right through the leather, and show quite as much at the back as they do in the front, whereas in the imitation they show little, if at all, at the back. Also the back of real pig skin is of very firm, close texture, but the imitation shows a more or less woolly or loose grained back, as it is generally made of sheep skin. French binders have never favoured pig skin much—it is not dainty enough for them.
Sheep skin has always been a favourite leather for bookbinding, but it is not a fine leather and has never been used for first-rate binding. It has, however, been more worked up than anything else into imitations of fine leathers.
The imitation of fine leather in inferior sheep skin has been for a long time a very important industry, and it is one which is still with us. All fine leathers show a particular and well known grain on their surface, but the most largely imitated is that of goat skin or morocco.
In a well grained skin of morocco, the beautiful grain is strongly marked, whether it be “pinhole” or “straight”—so strongly marked indeed that a cast of it can well be made in plaster of paris. From such a cast a metal die can be made, and when this die is strongly pressed upon a prepared piece of sheep skin, which will take an impression extremely well, the result is that a surface is produced which is so exactly like a piece of morocco that even a leather expert may be, and often is, taken in by it. In course of time, however, the impression flattens out, and the fraud betrays itself.