But I am trespassing upon the binder’s province. The cloth cover seems to be a sort of compromise, though often agreeable enough. Our continental neighbours issue their books in limp paper wrappers, expecting them to be bound as a matter of course. This may account for the high state of the binder’s craft, as a craft, in France. Here, our publishers vie with each other in issuing their books in attractive cloth gilt covers which at one time were intended to rival the gold-tooled binding. Of late we have seen every kind of eccentricity upon book-covers both in design and execution, gold, silver, black and white, and various colours being used in cloth printed covers, and designers often going far in the pictorial direction. We may see the influence of the poster, but still more so when we come to the printed paper cover which imposes still fewer restrictions upon the designer, in fact, none at all, except that of space—unless his sense of fitness imposes limits upon himself; yet cloth covers have perhaps shown more licence than the printed paper cover of late.
The cover printed in few and frank colours and varnished for protection from wear has had a considerable vogue for Christmas books of the lighter sort and for those principally intended for children. These were, when first introduced, rather shocking to the bookselling mind, which went by weight and the amount of gold on a cloth cover, in appraising literary and artistic worth in the market.
When a certain thin square volume for which I was responsible was modestly offered at 5s., the usual test being applied, the answer was, “This will never do!”—the public, however, was of a different opinion.
It may be said for the cover printed in colours, when it encloses a book printed in colours, that it has a certain fitness, and for the rest must depend largely upon the designer.
Binding of Oak Boards covered with Stamped Calf, with Panels Representing the Baptism of Christ and St. George and the Dragon, by John Reynes (Sixteenth Century)
The illustrated magazine cover has exercised a good deal of artistic ingenuity, and always presents the problem of the treatment of lettering as an essential part of the design, as indeed it always should be. There is something attractive about the angular and abstract forms of letters used in contrast with the free lines of the human figure and drapery, or floral ornament, or heraldry, and in a cover design to be printed from a line block the designer may indulge his feeling for these contrasting elements.
Here again the influence of the poster has come in, the conditions of the magazine cover in its struggle for existence on the bookstall being similar to the struggle for pre-eminence upon the hoarding among its larger commercial cousins. In the covers of the magazine, the illustrated weekly journal, and the railway novel we see the popular side of cover design and decoration, largely intended in the first place to attract attention, with a view of immediate sale.
Like all competitive processes with a commercial object, while certain qualities such as a kind of force or eccentricity may be evolved, it generally leads to deterioration on the artistic side. The final test of all design, and especially design of book-covers—the apparel of our companions and friendly counsellors—seems to be wrapped up in the question: “Can you live with it?”
One may admire the skill and celerity of a juggler and conjurer, but it would be uncomfortable to sit frequently at table with a professor of the craft who was given to whisk away one’s dinner napkin, swallow the knives and forks, or discover the roast mutton in his neighbour’s pocket.