Bookbinding and The Care of Books
Librarians by Douglas Cockerell with Drawings
by Noel Rooke and other Illustrations
New York
1902
Book binding Chapter XVI
Part 1
For gold tooling, such tools as gouges, dots, pieces
of straight line, and fillets are to be had
ready-made at most dealers. Other tools are best
designed and cut to order. At first only a few
simple forms will be needed, such as one or two
flowers of different sizes, and one or two sets of
leaves (see fig. 100).
In designing tools, it must be borne in mind that
they may appear on the book many times repeated,
and so must be simple in outline and much
naturalistic drawing of a flower,
showing the natural irregularities, may
look charming, but if a tool is cut from
it, any marked irregularity becomes
extremely annoying when repeated
several times on a cover. So with leaves,
different directions, and the third quite straight (see fig. 101). To have only one leaf, and to have
that curved, produces very restless patterns. The essence of gold-tool design, is that patterns are
made up of repeats of impressions of tools, and that being so, the tools must be so designed that
they will repeat pleasantly, and in practice it will be found that any but simple forms will become
aggressive in repetition.
Designs for tools should be made out with Indian ink on white paper, and they may be larger
than the size of the required tool. The tool-cutter will reduce any drawing to any desired size,
and will from one drawing, cut any number of tools of different sizes. Thus, if a set of five leaves
of the same shape is wanted, it will only be necessary to draw one, and to indicate the sizes the
others are to be in some such way as shown at fig. 102.
I t is not suggested that special tools should be cut for each pattern, but the need of new tools
will naturally arise from time to time, and so the stock be gradually increased. It is better to
begin with a very few, and add a tool or two as occasion arises, than to try to design a complete
set when starting.
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