The Art of Bookbinding: A practical treatise, with plates and diagrams

by Joseph William Zaehnsdorf

Silk is finished more easily, and can, if care be taken, have rather elaborate work put upon it. In such a case, the lines or tools, which must be blinded-in first, may be glaired. For this purpose the glaire must be put in a saucer or plate in the free air for a day or two, so that a certain amount of water or moisture of the glaire may be evaporated; but it must not be too stiff so as to prevent the brush going freely over the stuff. Great care, however, must be taken, or the glaire will spread and cause a stain. A thin coat of paste-water will give silk a body and keep the glaire from spreading to a certain extent, but I think the best medium for silk is the dry one, and it is always ready for instant use. In using glaire the gold is laid on the silk, but on no account must any oil or lard be rubbed on it for the temporary holding of the gold. Rub the parts intended for the gold with the finger (passed through the hair), or with a clean rag lightly oiled, and when the tools are re-impressed a clean piece of flannel should be used to wipe off the superfluous gold.

Blocking has been used lately on silk with some success in Germany. The blocking plate is taken out of the press, and the gold is laid on it, and then replaced in the press. The finishing powder is freely distributed over the silk side, which is laid on the bed of the press. On pulling the lever over, the block descends and imprints the design in gold on the silk. This process may be applied to velvet, |147| but velvet never takes the sharpness of the design on account of the pile, so that as a rule it is left in its natural state.

Vellum.—The Dutch, as a nation, appear to have been the first to bind books in vellum. It was then a simple kind of casing, with hollow backs. A later improvement of theirs was that of sewing the book on double raised cords, and making the book with a tight back, similar to the way in which our flexible books are now done, showing the raised bands. The ornamentation was entirely in blind, both on the back and sides, and the tools used were of a very solid character.

This art of binding in vellum seems to be entirely lost at the present day; its imperishable nature is indeed its only recommendation. It has little beauty; is exceedingly harsh; and little variety can be produced even in the finishing.

There are two or three kinds of vellum prepared from calf skins at the present day, thanks to the progress of invention. First, we have the prepared or artist’s vellum, with a very white artificial surface; then the Oxford vellum, the surface of which is left in its natural state; the Roman vellum, which has a darker appearance. Parchment is an inferior animal membrane prepared from sheepskins after the manner of vellum, and this is very successfully imitated by vegetable parchment, made by immersing unsized paper for a few seconds in a bath of diluted oil of vitriol. This preparation resembles the animal parchment so closely that it is not easy to distinguish the difference. It is used very extensively in France for wrappering the better class of literature, instead of issuing them in cloth as is the custom here.

The method of finishing vellum is altogether different to leather. On account of its very hard and compact nature, it requires no other ground or preparation than glaire for gold work. |148|

The cover should be very carefully washed with a soft sponge and clean water, to clean off any dirt or finger-marks, and to make the book look as fresh as possible. This washing must be very carefully done by going over the surface as few times as possible. This caution applies particularly to the prepared or artist vellum, as each washing will take off a certain amount of the surface, so that the more it is damped and rubbed the more the surface will be disturbed and the beauty destroyed. It requires some experience to distinguish the flesh and leather surfaces of prepared vellum, but this experience must be acquired, because it is absolutely necessary that the leather side should be outward when the book is covered, for two reasons: the flesh side is more fibrous, and adheres better to the boards than the leather side, and the leather side is less liable to have its surface disturbed in the process of washing.

The parts that are to be gilt must be glaired, but as the glaire will show its presence, or, more strictly speaking, leave rather a dirty mark, the tools should first be worked in blind, and the glaire laid on carefully up to their outer edge. When dry, lay the gold on and work the tool in. Let the tools be only moderately warm; if too hot they will go through to the mill-board, leaving their mark as if they had been cut out with a knife.

As a rule no very heavy tooling is ever put on vellum, the beauty lies in keeping the vellum as clean as possible. The tooling being, comparatively speaking, on the surface, owing to the thinness of the skin, requires a very competent and clean workman to produce anything like good work on vellum.

Vellum is of so greasy a nature that, if a title-piece of leather has to be put on, it will be found that there is a great difficulty in making it adhere properly unless some special precaution be taken. The best plan is to scrape |149| the surface where the leather is intended to be placed with the edge of a knife. This will produce a rough and fibrous ground on which to place the pasted leather. This leather, when dry, must be prepared with paste-water and glaire, in the same manner as with other books.