Fig. 53.—Oriental binding with flap.
The open work cut with a knife from thin leather is remarkable for its extraordinary precision and delicacy; it is usually in arabesques with small flowers, and often coloured by hand. It is always set on a background of colour, either painted or a bit of coloured paper. But the work is very frail, and panels of it are rarely found perfect.
Oriental bindings are altogether weak, and they will not stand hard wear.
Now we have, chiefly from America, machines that will do almost every one of the hand-operations for binding a book. There are sewing machines that only want to be fed with thread and the books to be sewn; there are casing machines of wonderful speed and accuracy, backing machines and binding machines. The only one thing that cannot yet be done by a machine is the pasting down the ends of the bands or tapes inside the boards. I rather think that many of these machines strain the paper badly, and also they require setting elaborately to a certain size. They are very useful for large, cheap editions, but little use for good miscellaneous work. Nothing is really so good as the old-fashioned sewing on raised bands by hand.
BOOKS TO CONSULT.
Cockerell, D. Bookbinding. London, 1901.
Davenport, C. Cantor Lectures on Decorative Bookbinding. London, 1898.
Davenport, C. (Encyc. Brit. Article Bookbinding). London, 1902.
Du Sommerard, A. Les arts au Moyen Age. Paris, 1838-46.