TASTE AND DESIGN.
It is of the utmost importance to a young workman that he have correct ideas in regard to taste, and be able to distinguish it from caprice or mere fancy. It is in the power of all to acquire a correct taste, for it is governed by laws that can be easily learned, and they are unchangeable. Taste may be said to be a perception and an appreciation of the principles of beauty and harmony as revealed by Nature through Art. Nothing contrary to nature, no violation of any law of proportion or of fitness, can be in good taste. The amateur and book-collector, in commencing the foundation of a library, will do well to pause before they adopt a species of binding that will in after years create a feeling of annoyance, and perhaps lead to pecuniary sacrifice.
A recent writer upon the New York Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations discourses thus:—"We call bookbinding an art; and when we consider all that is necessary to the perfect covering of a fine book, it must be admitted to be an art; less important, it is true, but similar in kind to architecture.
"The first requisition upon the skill of the binder is to put the book into a cover which will effectually protect it, and at the same time permit it to be used with ease. If he do not accomplish this, his most elaborate exhibition of ornamental skill is worth nothing; for he fails in the very end for which his services are required. It was in this regard, too, that most of our binders failed in past years. Who that remembers the hideous, harsh, speckled sheep covers which deformed our booksellers' shelves not long ago, can forget the added torment which they inflicted upon their unhappy purchaser, by curling up palpably before his very eyes, as he passed his first evening over them, and by casting out loose leaves or whole signatures before he had finished his first perusal? In those days, too, there was morocco binding, with a California of gold upon the sides; and such morocco! it felt to the fingers like a flattened nutmeg-grater, seeming to protect the book by making it painful for any one to touch it. This was as useless as the humbler though not more vulgar sheep. It would hardly last through the holiday season on the centre-table which it was made to adorn.
"The binder's next task is to give his work the substantial appearance without which the eye of the connoisseur will remain unsatisfied. The volume must not only be well protected, but seem so. It should be solid, compact, square-edged, and enclosed in firm boards of a stoutness proportionate to its size, and these should be covered with leather at once pliable and strong. Unless it present this appearance, it will be unsatisfactory in spite of the richest colours and the most elaborate ornament. Thus far the mere mechanical skill of the binder goes. In the choice of his style of binding, and in the decoration of his book, if he perform his task with taste and skill, he rises to the rank of an artist.
"The fitness of the binding to the character of the volume which it protects, though little regarded by many binders, and still less by those for whom they work, is of the first importance. Suppose Moore's Lalla Rookh bound in rough sheep, with dark russia back and corners, like a merchant's ledger, or Johnson's folio Dictionary in straw-coloured morocco elaborately gilded, and lined with pale blue watered-silk, is there an eye, no matter how uneducated, which would not be shocked at the incongruity? Each book might be perfectly protected, open freely, and exhibit evidence of great mechanical and artistic skill on the part of the binder; but his atrocious taste would insure him a just and universal condemnation. And yet there are violations of fitness to be seen daily, on the majority of public and private shelves, little less outrageous than those we have supposed. Books of poetry, and illustrated works on art bound in sober speckled or tree-marbled calf, with little gold upon the backs and sides, and none upon the edges! Histories, statistical works, and books of reference, in rich morocco, splendidly gilded!—the idea that the styles ought to change places seeming never to enter the heads of the possessors of these absurdly-covered volumes. But a little reflection by any person of taste, and power to discern the eternal fitness of things, will make it apparent that there should be congruity and adaptation in the binding of books. Sober, practical volumes should be correspondingly covered; calf and russia leather, with marbled paper and edges, become them; while works of imagination, such as poetry and books of engravings, demand rich morocco, fanciful ornaments, and gilding. To bind histories, philosophical works, dictionaries, books of reference and the like, in plain calf or dark russia,—travels, novels, essays, and the lighter kind of prose writing, in tinted calf or pale russia with gilding,—poetry in full morocco richly gilded, and works on art in half morocco, with the top edge only cut and gilded,—seems a judicious partition of the principal styles of binding. The margins of an illustrated work on Art should never be cut away, except where it is absolutely necessary for the preservation of the book from dust, and the convenience of turning the leaves—that is, at the top. It is well here to enter a protest against the indiscriminate use of the antique style of binding, with dark-brown calf, bevelled boards, and red edges. This is very well in its place; but it should be confined to prose works of authors who wrote not later than one hundred and fifty years ago. What propriety is there in putting Scott, or Irving, or Dickens, or Longfellow, in such a dress?"
Hartley Coleridge's opinion on the subject of taste in Bookbinding is thus given:—"The binding of a book should always suit its complexion. Pages venerably yellow should not be cased in military morocco, but in sober brown russia. Glossy hot-pressed paper looks best in vellum. We have sometimes seen a collection of whitey-brown black-letter ballads, &c. so gorgeously tricked out that they remind us of the pious liberality of the Catholics, who dress in silk and gold the images of saints, part of whose saintship consisted in wearing rags and hair-cloth. The costume of a volume should also be in keeping with its subject, and with the character of its author. How absurd to see the works of William Penn in flaming scarlet, and George Fox's Journal in bishops' purple! Theology should be solemnly gorgeous. History should be ornamented after the antique and Gothic fashion; works of science, as plain as is consistent with dignity; poetry, simplex munditis."
And it may not be irrelevant here to introduce the opinion of Dr. Dibdin, whose connection with some of the first libraries in England, and whose intimate knowledge of all the great book-collectors of the same, must tend to stamp him as a good authority on the subject:—
"The general appearance of one's library is by no means a matter of mere foppery or indifference; it is a sort of cardinal point, to which the tasteful collector does well to attend. You have a right to consider books, as to their outsides, with the eye of a painter; because this does not militate against the proper use of the contents.