Book Collecting: A Guide for Amateurs

by J. Herbert Slater

In the palmy days of Rome, art in all its varied forms was probably as advanced as it is now, and we cannot doubt that Virgil and Homer, the representative poets of Rome and Greece, were to be found in a score of palaces, dressed as befitted their high reputation, in the most noble and expensive of coverings. Two thousand years have, however, made a clean sweep of Roman artist and Roman bookman alike, and we have nothing to guide us beyond the casual remarks of one or two diarists and historians of the day, whose chronicles have happened, almost by chance, to come down to us. The names of none of the ancient binders survive, and not a trace of their workmanship remains; we know only that there were such beings, who occasionally threw into their work great taste and skill, and that bibliophiles vied with each other in gaining possession of their choicest examples.

When, therefore, the question is asked, Who was the first binder known to fame? we cannot look to Greece or to Rome for an answer, nor yet to Italy. Curiously enough it is to Ireland that we must turn, for there the monk Dagæus practised the art so long ago as 520 A.D. One example only of his handiwork has survived to our own day, and is now to be found in the library of the British Museum along with the Textus Sanctus Cuthberti bound by the first English workman, one Bilfred, a monk of Durham, who flourished nearly 1200 years ago. This Textus, so the old legend says, was once swallowed up by the sea, which, respectful of the merits of the saint, gracefully retired fully three miles of its own accord, and so restored the cherished volume to its owners. As the monks were the sole multipliers of books, so also they were, until the invention of printing in 1450, the only binders. Manuscripts of the ninth century are extant, heavily encased in ivory-carved covers or confined between gold and silver plates studded with precious stones. More often than not these expensive coverings were destined to be their ruin, for, to say nothing of private peculation, the sumptuous bindings were ripped off at the time of the Reformation for the sake of the metal or stones, and the manuscripts thrown in thousands upon the tender mercies of the vandals into whose hands they fell.

In the fourteenth century Petrarch was knocked down by one of his own tomes, and was within an ace of breaking his leg, but this was at a period when monastic bindings ordinarily consisted of wood, covered with leather and protected by metallic bosses, corner plates, and massive clasps of iron. Bulk and weight were then the great desiderata, though every now and then the richest materials were still employed in binding, as when a king's library was added to, or some rich monastery gave orders for a sacred volume to be covered with the enamels of Limoges, ivory, gold or silver, and encrusted with jewels.

From the end of the fifth to the middle of the fifteenth century, books were excessively rare and costly, and comparatively few bindings illustrative of the art during the dark ages have been preserved. The few that have survived are wonderful specimens of art, and in every way worthy of the illuminated manuscripts they enclose.

The period of the Renaissance, which is usually assigned to the Pontificate of Leo X., was witness of another change. The ponderous tomes, whose weight was alone a protection, gradually gave way to smaller-sized volumes, and these were often bound in velvet or silk, beautifully embroidered by lady amateurs, perhaps also by professed binders. At other times the monastic covering of wood and leather is observable, and often the leather gave way to seal and shark skin without any tooling or other ornamentation.

These different styles of binding continued in vogue side by side until the introduction of typography, when the Venetians introduced morocco from the East and found out the virtues of calf. Books now became bound in oak boards covered with these leathers or in thick parchment or pig skin, old manuscripts often being cut up and of course destroyed for the purpose: boards, clasps, and bosses became obsolete, while silken embroidery maintained a precarious existence, dependent solely on the spasmodic efforts of accomplished amateurs whose tastes and inclinations were swayed by fashion. Finally, parchment disappeared and leather bindings held universal sway, and have so maintained it to our own time, though the English cloth-bound book is now employed whenever expense is an object.

Such is a short history of the development of the art of bookbinding, as necessary to be understood and remembered as any other branch of our subject.

Some of the better-known and more valuable descriptions of ornamental bindings, whether Italian, French, or English, derive their entire importance by reason of their having come from the libraries of noted collectors, who bound their books after a model pattern. Many of these specimens are of the greatest rarity and often of great value. As works of art, too, they are frequently far superior to anything that can be, or at any rate is, produced at the present day. A really well bound book by Le Gascon, or one of the Eves, for example, is a beautiful object. The covers, of the choicest calf or morocco, are tooled in patterns, i.e., hand engraved, in gold; the edges are of gilt, gauffré, that is to say, designs are impressed on them also; the whole is a splendid specimen of bibliopegistic skill. Such artists as these disdained blind tooling, where the patterns are worked out and left without their meed of gold. Half-bound volumes with their back and corners of leather and their sides of vulgar paper or boards they were either ignorant of or despised.

All this excellence of course cost money, which then, as now, was in the hands of the few, and it must not for a moment be supposed that examples of high-class binding were at all common even during the era in which they were produced. They are scarcer now, for time and fire have claimed their share of spoil, but it was only the great collectors of almost unlimited means, popes, kings, and cardinals, and their favourites, who could afford at any time to furnish a library where beautiful bindings predominated.

These collections have for the most part been dispersed over the world, and an amateur of the true old-fashioned type will not allow himself to be looked upon as fortunate, if his shelves do not contain one or two examples at least from the magnificent libraries of brother amateurs long since passed away.