The majority of modern books are bound with hollow backs; it can be recognised by opening a book to the full and seeing if the back is separate, and it has one real virtue as well as several vices. If a book should happen to be printed too far back, a hollow back binding will enable it to “throw up,” and show the printing right down to the inner edge of the paper, whereas a flexible binding always tends to open less freely, especially in the middle.
For books that are likely to be much used hollow backs are unadvisable as they are sooner worn out, but for small light books there is no doubt much to be said in their favour.
Fig. 32.—Back of book prepared with cut trenches to hold the bands.
Among English binders of note I think Charles Lewis was the first to use hollow backs extensively. But for fine books there is no doubt that the old-fashioned flexible sewing on raised bands is the best in the long run. Books bound with hollow backs often have the bands “sawn in,” that is to say, a trench is cut for each band across the back of the sections. In these trenches the bands are laid, and the sewing is of a simpler and quicker sort than it is when the thread is brought round each band as it is in the flexible style. Moreover, there is a weak point where the thread touches the edge of the saw cut, and at this place the paper is always apt to give. It is obvious that to cut away paper from the back of a section must always be not only a barbarism but also structurally wrong. Such a method of sewing a book can only be excused on the score of cheapness, and it may be urged that in this case it does not matter.
Towards the end of the fifteenth century it was found that the extreme tops and bottoms of the backs of the sections of bound books not only looked untidy and unfinished, but also that they tended to gape, in fact they were weak points both structurally and artistically. When it was once realised it was soon rectified, and a small additional band was made of a strip of leather or vellum, to fit along the outer edge of the top and bottom at the back. This slip was then sewn on by means of thread and button-hole stitching, being caught in at intervals by a long stitch drawn through the centre of one or other of the sections of the book. The loose ends of the headband itself were drawn in to the boards, forming in fact an additional band. The headband is a point in the forwarding of a book which has not received much notice as yet, but it is of some importance, as there is no doubt that much attention has been paid by binders to the ornamentation of headbands from mediæval times until now, and it is the first point in the binding of a book in which ornament is considered.
Fig. 33.—French sixteenth century headband.
Fig. 34.—Italian fifteenth century headband.