Bookbinding and The Care of Books
Librarians by Douglas Cockerell with Drawings
by Noel Rooke and other Illustrations
New York
1902
Book binding Chapter XIII
Part 4
merely held in place by the slips being laced
through them, or they may be pasted down on
boards in much the same way as leather. If the
edges of a book for limp vellum binding are to be
trimmed or gilt, that should be done before
sewing. F or the ends a folded piece of thin vellum
may replace the paste-down paper. The sewing
should be on strips of vellum. The back is left
square after gluing, and headbands are worked as
for leather binding, or may be worked on strips of
vellum (see p. 15 I). The back and headbands are lined
with leather, and the book is ready for the cover. A
piece of vellum should be cut out large enough to cover
the book, and to leave a margin of an inch and a half all
round. This is marked with a folder on the under side,
as shown at fig. 75, A. Spaces I and 2 are the size of the
sides of the book with surrounding squares; space 3 is
the width of the back, and space 4 the width for the
overlaps on the fore-edge. The corners are cut, as shown
at 5, and the edges are folded over, as at B. The overlap
4 is then turned over, and the back folded, as at C. The
slips are now Vellum laced through slits made in the
vellum bindings a piece of loose, toned paper may be
put inside the cover to prevent any marks on the book
from showing through; and pieces of silk ribbon of
good quality are laced in as shown, going through both
cover and vellum ends, if there are any, and are left with
ends long enough to tie (see fig. 76).
be laced through the cover, and the end
paper pasted over it on the inside. Another
simple way of keeping a vellum book shut is
shown at fig. 77. A bead is attached to a piece
of gut laced into the vellum, and a loop of
catgut is laced in the other side, and looped
over the bead as shown. If the book is to
have stiff boards, and the vellum is to be
pasted to them, it is best to sew the sections
on tapes or vellum slips, to back the book as
for leather, and to insert the ends of the slips
in a split board, leaving a French joint, as
described for library bindings. Vellum is
very stiff, and, if it is pasted directly to the
back, the book would be hard to open. It is
back, a piece of stout paper is taken which measures once the length of the
back and three times the width. This is folded in three. The centre portion is
glued to the back and well rubbed down, and the overlapping edges turned
back and glued one to the other (fig. 78). This will leave a flat, hollow casing,
formed by the single paper glued to the back of the book and the double
paper to which the vellum may be attached. Or it is better to line up the back
with leather, and to place a piece of thick paper the size of the back on to the
pasted vellum where the back will be when the book is covered.
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