Modern bookbindings: Their design and decoration

by S. T. Prideaux

Mais cet ivoire souple et presque diaphane,

Marguerite, Marie, ou peut-être Diane,

De leurs doigts amoureux l’ont jadis caressé;

Et ce vélin pâli que dora Clovis Éve

Évoque, je ne sais par quel charme passé,

L’âme de leur parfum et l’ombre de leur rêve.

32. Bound by Léon Gruel.

Here in the Galliera we realize how complete is the revolution now finally effected by a people who clung long and faithfully to the traditions of a style made famous by Grolier and by the Eves, Le Gascon and Derôme. All through the nineteenth century these traditions were adhered to, carried out by Thouvenin, Simier and Capé, by Chambolle, Duru, Trautz and Cuzin, the inspired copyists of the great masters. These looked on originality as the most dangerous of innovations and a sort of disloyalty to the precedents handed down to them across the ages. Nevertheless the impending change was slowly and surely making way, fostered by Lortic and Marius Michel, the latter through his writings as well as in his work. Henri Marius Michel followed in his father’s steps: his essay on L’ornamentation des reliures modernes showed clearly the direction taken by the modern school; while the sumptuous book, La reliure du XIX siècle, by Henri Béraldi, who is both a patron and collector of distinction, may be said to have given final expression to the movement as a whole. Bookbinding, in common with larger subjects, has its bibliography. A glance over the names of the books that relate to it published during the last half-century shows well enough how interest has been displaced from the historic schools to those which have initiated entirely new forms of decoration as applied to book covers. If, then, we are struck by the contrast between past and present as regards the nature of this application of art to bindings, we are equally impressed by the contrast between the position of the binder then and now. It is no wonder that the small world of binders and their patrons in Paris were proud of the position of honour assigned to their craft in 1902. They inaugurated a series of exhibitions, which is to include ivories, lace, jewellery, furniture—every art, in fact, to which there attaches the personality that can only come from having at some time had as its exponents ‘the masters of those who know.’ Even so late as 1870 the name of Trautz was unknown, not only to the ordinary public, but to such collectors as Eugène Paillet and Quentin Bauchart, though he had been producing admirable work for thirty years. In 1878 he was decorated with the Legion of Honour, the first time that any such distinction had been offered to a binder. It was only after his retirement and subsequent return to business at the age of sixty that his fame grew till it culminated in a sort of worship that is inconceivable outside of France. Nowadays the many means of publicity would render such a state of things quite impossible. It is an age in which every one longs to see himself reflected in print or show-case; and if the workman in any line does not himself take measures for bringing his efforts to the light, there is a class whose chief occupation it is to be the discoverers of hidden talent, and to act as middlemen between the producer and the public. In Paris, binders have now a status that is looked upon with surprise and envy in England. They are still, it is true, mostly congregated on the left bank of the Seine, the quarter which was formerly in the parish of Saint-André-des-Arts, and where their guild had its church of that name, now no longer in existence. Up to five-and-twenty years ago there was hardly one that lived elsewhere, and even now it is the exception to find a binder in the more fashionable quarter. One has to climb high to reach their ateliers, invariably of very modest dimensions and where but few workmen are employed. The extensive businesses that we know in London hardly exist in Paris, and M. Gruel’s is probably the only one employing a large number of hands. For the most part two or three ‘forwarders’ and the same number of ‘finishers’ will suffice for the yearly output of a single workshop. But to these ateliers go personally the great collectors who are wealthy patrons, to discuss in detail different points of design and technique with a connoisseurship that is reserved with us for painting or sculpture. To the unstinted help and intelligent appreciation afforded by such a class of amateurs is undoubtedly due the superior position of the artistic crafts in France. Many of the bindings in the Galliera were achieved at a cost of two thousand francs, and others for three and even four thousand. There are two papers entirely devoted to the craft—La Reliure, which is the organ of the Chambre Syndicale, an association of master binders founded by M. Gruel; and Le Relieur, organ of the Chambre Syndicale Ouvrière, which is the corresponding association for workmen. Every year binders can exhibit at each of the rival Salons, at the Société des Artistes Français and the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and the Galliera Exhibition is but the latest and most effective of the special exhibitions organized from time to time for the exclusive display of their work. There is a desire to make such exhibitions recurrent every ten years, so as to get a periodic outlook on the art as a whole; but it is unlikely that the next few decades will show such marked characteristics of difference as may be seen by comparison of this collection with that even of 1892 organized by the Cercle de la Librairie. It may, in fact, be suggested that the evolution—or revolution, according to the point of view taken—now at its height, will probably produce a reaction towards that greater sobriety of treatment which distinguished the best work of the past. There are, indeed, already signs that the future of binding will not lie in that emancipation from all restrictions of form and material which would seem to be the ideal of some. Precisely what that future will be rests largely, no doubt, with the collectors, who are, as has been indicated, a powerful body in France, largely on the increase. It is they who, like MM. Béraldi, Spencer, Bordes, Villebœuf, Roger, Marx, Claude Lafontaine, Baron de Claye, Louis Barthou, and many others, not only furnish binders with the means of giving full play to their imagination, but often devote their pens with enthusiasm to introducing new efforts to the numerous body of amateurs who look to them for guidance in matters of taste and are ready enough to follow their initiative.