37. Bound by Mercier.
II
In 1866 Henri Marius Michel, though only twenty years of age, had taken an important position in the business, maintaining the traditions of his father with equal zest and talent; and ten years later the atelier became one for binding in all its branches, a change which enabled Henri to develop his instincts for originality, the firstfruits of which were seen in the incised and modelled leather covers exhibited by him at L’Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs in 1881. But it was the days of the Trautz mania; and no collector would hear of any binder but Trautz. All the old books must be broken up to be recovered by him, and even bindings by Bozérian were destroyed to be replaced by those of Trautz. Notwithstanding his enormous output, the workshop was filled with books which he kept years without touching, and prices continued to increase until the Lacarelle sale in 1888, when there were signs of a change. In one auction-room there were 420 Trautz bindings, in another 380; in the library of James de Rothschild there were 2800 items, of which 1400 were in nineteenth-century binding, a thousand of these latter being bound by Trautz. But time brings its revenges; the place of Trautz is possibly now as much below his deserts as it was then above, while Henri Marius Michel, whose gifts of invention were long ignored as revolutionary, is now at the height of his reputation. M. Béraldi calls him the finest binder since the Renaissance, and there are those who say that the idolatry of Trautz has given place to another and no less extravagant form of hero worship.
Unceasingly occupied with decoration, he gave up the practice of gilding with his own hand, but has continued to execute the Cuir Ciselé, which is one of the styles in which he first achieved success and in which he is undoubtedly past master. Another style that has been associated with his name since 1885 is that known as le flore stylisé, in which flower motives are very slightly conventionalized, but with a certain individuality that makes his work unmistakable, notwithstanding the number of his imitators. Modern French designs of this type are not nearly enough conventionalized for our English taste, where a frankly realistic treatment of natural growths has always been considered unsound.
38. Bound by Mercier.
With the death of Trautz and the rise of the new book-collecting had come the moment for a revolution in binding, and Henri Marius Michel was quickly followed by others. He had, in fact, set the ball rolling, and broken with the long-kept traditions of symmetry, only to let loose a flood of eccentric work for which there was little to be said, and which often had not even the saving grace of technique. He at once became reactionary, and there was a period during which he returned to repeated patterns, simple line borders and the ordinary corner and centre ornaments, rendered with faultless execution. But Marius might turn reactionary for a time; the craze for l’art nouveau, as it was termed, was not to be lightly checked. Everything was now pressed into the service for the mere sake of novelty—leather, wood-carving, bronzes, ivories, enamels, miniatures, all found a place until a binding looked like any but what it should be, namely, a thing to be pleasant in the hand and intended to protect a book, without needing protection for itself. Curiosity shops were ransacked for silks and satins as board-linings. Japan yielded its papers and its embossed leathers, flowers of exotic growth lent strange forms to design, and symbolism became rampant. For a time, indeed, emblematic bindings were accepted as the note of the new style which was to mark the century, and in the hands of the indifferent artist became a real terror. There is obviously no such thing as ‘new art’—there is simply art or there is not, and there can be no real art without good craftsmanship. Under pretext of inventing a style that was to belong to the century, all that was done was to perpetuate grotesqueness instead of originality and a burlesque of ideas in their application to binding.
Meanwhile discussion as to the limitations of material naturally became faster and more furious, while the literature on the subject grew apace. In 1896 a controversy arose between Gruel and Michel, the former being supported by Bosquet, a binder holding an important position in the library of Messrs. Hachette and a frequent writer on his craft both in its historical and technical aspects. We, for whom the artistic crafts occupy a very subordinate position, can hardly imagine the heat of discussion that rages round a subject like this in France. The combatants at once range themselves on opposite sides, and the weapons used are all the resources of a language pre-eminently suited to satire and ridicule, but which somehow seem an armoury out of place on so restricted a battlefield. The Frenchman, however, is never so happy himself, nor, may we say, so entertaining to his neighbours, as when his tongue and his pen are giving effect to the ready wit that seems always at his service.
