INTRODUCTION.
SKETCH OF THE PROGRESS OF BOOKBINDING.
The earliest records of Bookbinding that exist prove that the art has been practised for nearly two thousand years. In past ages, books were written on long scrolls of parchment or papyrus, and were rolled up and fastened with a thong which was made of coloured leather and often highly ornamented. These scrolls were usually attached to one, or, occasionally, two rollers of wood or ivory, or sometimes of gold, much as our large maps are now mounted, and the bosses at the end of the rollers were frequently highly decorated. This decoration may be called the first step toward Ornamental Art applied to the exterior of books.
A learned Athenian, named Phillatius, to whom his countrymen erected a statue, at length found out a means of binding books with glue. The sheets of vellum or papyrus were gathered two or four together, sewn much in the same way as at the present day; and then, in order to preserve these sheets, there came, as a matter of course, a covering for the book.
The probability is that the first book-covers were of wood—plain oaken boards, perhaps; then, as books in those days were all in manuscript, and very valuable, carved oak bindings were given to those which were the most decorated within.
To cover the plain wooden board with vellum or leather would, in the course of years, be too apparent an improvement to be neglected; and specimens of books so bound, of the great antiquity of which there are undoubted proofs, exist at the present day.
There is reason to believe that the Romans carried the Art of Binding to considerable perfection. Some of the public offices had books called Dyptichs,[*] in which their acts were written. The binding of one of these in carved wood is thus described:—"Seated in the centre of each board is a consul, holding in one hand a baton, and in the other, upraised, a purse, as if in the act of throwing it to some victor in the games. Above these are miniature portraits, various other ornaments, and an inscription; below, on one board, are two men leading out horses for the race, and beneath them a group, with a ludicrous representation of two other men, exhibiting their endurance of pain by allowing crabs to fasten on their noses." A small print of an ivory dyptich of the fifth century, in Mr. Arnett's "Books of the Ancients," may be consulted as a specimen of the kind of ornament then adopted. An old writer says, that about the time of the Christian era the books of the Romans were covered with red, yellow, green, and purple leather, and decorated with gold and silver.
If we pass on to a few centuries later, we find that the monks were almost the only literati. They wrote chiefly on subjects of religion, and bestowed the greatest pains upon the internal and external decorations of their books. In the thirteenth century some of the gospels, missals, and other service-books for the Greek and Roman churches, were ornamented with silver and gold, apparently wrought by the hammer; sometimes they were enamelled and enriched with precious stones, and pearls of great value. Carved oak figures of the Virgin, or the Infant Saviour, or of the Crucifixion, were also the frequent adornments of the outside covers. One of these ancient relics is thus described by the librarian of Henry VIII.