Such a long strip could, however, be folded accordion-like instead of being rolled up. If the folds were made between the columns of writing, each column became a page and the whole began to resemble the book we are familiar with today.
At first these rudimentary books were protected by wooden boards pasted to the first and last pages. As a next step holes were stabbed through every page near the left-hand fold, and a cord or thong laced through the holes held the “accordion” together along one side.
By the fifth century a method had come into general use of sewing individually folded sheets together one by one, not to each other but to a series of flexible “hinges.” These were usually narrow strips of leather—four, five, or sometimes six depending on the height of the book—laid across the folded edges of the pages. Linen thread sewed through the folds and around each cross-strip in turn held the pages firmly in place. Wooden boards affixed to the thongs as well as pasted to the first and last pages protected the whole, sometimes with the help of metal clasps and even locks.
These methods of preserving written material have now largely been superseded by the printed and bound or machine-cased book: (A) Diptych or hinged tablet of wood, ivory, or the like, often carved, whose inner surfaces of wax carried writing impressed by the stylus. (B) Scroll with columnar writing on a pair of rollers. (C) Japanese “orihon,” accordion-folded and bound along one side. (D) Codex or early form of book, an illuminated manuscript protected between thin boards; our word “book” comes from the German for beech (Buch), a wood often used for this purpose.
To guard the leather crossbands and linen thread from exposure and wear, it then became customary to cover the spine of the book with a wide, vertical strip of leather. Later, for better appearance and greater protection, the leather covering was extended partway onto the boards (the so-called “half-binding” of the medieval period) and then all the way.
Thus was developed and perfected the bound book: a collection of folded sheets sewn together flexibly and protected between covers. Its physical structure was largely the creation of monastic craftsmen of the early Middle Ages, just as its literary content throughout that period was most often religious scripture or comment.
BOOKS CAN BE BEAUTIFUL
Speaking only of quality of materials and workmanship, a book may be bound just as well in a simple cover as in an ornate one. Fine binding does not require adornment. It does require the services of a man of high skill and matching integrity, whose handiwork will inevitably display the quiet beauties of intrinsic quality.
But in the hands of men who possess the spark of creative artistry, bookbinding can be more than pure craft work. Although the binder’s decorative tools are forever prefixed, each to reproduce its own set and simple pattern, they are infinitely flexible in the ways they can be combined. It is not the tool that makes a binding beautiful or ugly, but the hand that holds the tool—and even more the mind and eye that guide the hand. The history of bookbinding is studded with the names of men who were true artists in leather. For them the most rewarding commission a customer could give was a simple order to dress some work of lasting worth in a binding of appropriate beauty.