Fig. 102.
Tools may be solid or in outline. If in outline they may be used as “inlay” tools, and in ordering them the tool-cutter should be asked to provide steel punches for cutting the inlays.
COMBINING TOOLS TO FORM PATTERNS
It is well for the student to begin with patterns arranged on some very simple plan, making slight changes in each succeeding pattern. In this way an individual style may be established. The usual plan of studying the perfected styles of the old binders, and trying to begin where they left off, in practice only leads to the production of exact imitations, or poor lifeless parodies, of the old designs. Whereas a pattern developed by the student by slow degrees, through a series of designs, each slightly different from the one before it, will, if eccentricities are avoided, probably have life and individual interest.
Perhaps the easiest way to decorate a binding is to cover it with some small repeating pattern. A simple form of diaper as a beginning is shown at [fig. 104]. To make such a pattern cut a piece of good, thin paper to the size of the board of a book, and with a pencil rule a line about an eighth of an inch inside the margin all round. Then with the point of a fine folder that will indent, but not cut the paper, mark up as shown in [fig. 103]. The position of the lines A A and B B are found by simply folding the paper, first side to side, and then head to tail. The other lines can be put in without any measurement by simply joining all points where lines cross. By continual re-crossing, the spaces into which the paper is divided can be reduced to any desired size. If the construction lines are accurately put in, the spaces will all be of the same size and shape. It is then evident that a repeating design to fill any one of the spaces can be made to cover the whole surface.
Fig. 103.
In [fig. 104], it is the diagonal lines only that are utilised for the pattern. To avoid confusion, the cross lines that helped to determine the position of the diagonals are not shown.