In the “trimming press and plough,” the bound pages of a book are clamped between the heavy horizontal beams of the press while a knife held in the plough slides back and forth, planing the exposed edge of the book smooth and even.
Next came the “drawing on” of the cover. The binder cut a piece of calfskin approximately ¾ inch larger all around than the covers of the book opened out flat, and with his skiving knife pared the margins of the leather very thin. After the leather had been well soaked with water on the outer or grain side and with paste on the inner side, the binder carefully molded it around the spine and smoothed it onto the boards—being careful not to stretch it. The pared margins were then turned in and the volume, except for minor touches and drying, was finally ready to be decorated.
Having decided on the pattern of decoration he wished to apply, the binder heated the appropriate brass tools to “blind in” the design. The tools had to be hot enough to make a sharp impression in the leather, but not hot enough to burn it. Each had to be pressed into the leather with just the right weight—not too much and not too little—to produce the desired effect.
If the pattern was also to be gilded, the binder prepared a solution of white-of-egg, called “glair,” and painted it into the blind impressions. Having laid gold leaf thereon, he again pressed the same heated tools carefully in the same indentations. The excess gold was then wiped off and the leather cleaned with diluted vinegar and dressed with a good leather dressing.
This is the Printing Office in Williamsburg, restored to look as it did in the eighteenth century when it was occupied in succession by William Parks, William Hunter, Joseph Royle, Alexander Purdie, and John Dixon with his partners William Hunter, Jr., and Thomas Nicolson.
Finally, the endpapers were pasted down to the insides of the boards and the book was complete. It took perhaps eight to ten hours of actual working time for a single volume, but spaced over as much as two weeks to allow drying time between processes.
THE WILLIAMSBURG BINDERY TODAY
Just as the printing office of William Parks and his successors stood on Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg two centuries ago, so it stands again today on its original site. Again today it includes a bindery where gentlemen and ladies may bespeak books to be bound or rebound in the most exact manner and the most elegant taste. The master binder assures his patrons that he uses only the best materials and can, if they so wish, decorate a volume with the egg, the Mousetrap, or any other roll or ornament in his stock that pleases their fancy.
For he not only uses the same kinds of tools used in the eighteenth century; some of them are actually recut to produce replicas of the old patterns. And his methods of work, too, are the same that were employed in this shop by men who put sturdy covers on the volumes of William Byrd II, Thomas Jefferson, and Norborne Berkeley—otherwise titled Lord Botetourt.