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 2
and impress it at the points where the diagonal
lines cross, holding it in the smoke of a candle
between every two or three impressions. When the
flower has been impressed all over, select a small
piece of straight line, and put a stalk in below each
flower; then a leaf put in on each side of the
straight line will complete the pattern.
Tools may be solid or in outline. If in outline they
may be used as "inlay" tools, and in ordering them
the tool-cutter should be asked to provide steel
punches for cutting the inlays.
slight changes in each succeeding pattern. In this way an individual style may be established. The
usual plan of studying the perfected styles of the old binders, and trying to begin where they left
off, in practice only leads to the production of exact imitations, or poor lifeless parodies, of the
old designs. Where as a pattern developed by the student by slow degrees through a series of
designs, each slightly different from the one before it, will, if eccentricities are avoided, probably
have life and individual interest.
simple form of diaper as a beginning is shown at fig. 104. To make such a pattern cut a piece of
good, thin paper to the size of the board of a book, and with a pencil rule a line about an eighth
of an inch inside the margin all round. Then with the point of a fine folder that will indent, but
not cut the paper, mark up as shown in fig. 103. The position of the lines A A and B B are
found by simply folding the paper, first side to side, and then head to tail.
by simply joining all points where lines cross. By
continual re-crossing, the spaces into which the paper
is divided can be reduced to any desired size. If the
construction lines are accurately put in, the spaces will
all be of the same size and shape. It is then evident that
a repeating design to fill anyone of the spaces can be
made to cover the whole surface. In fig. 104, it is the
diagonal lines only that are utilized for the pattern. To
avoid confusion, the cross lines that helped to
determine the position of the diagonals are not shown.
The advantage of using the point of a folder to mark
up the constructional lines of a pattern instead of a
pencil, is that the lines so made are much finer, do not
rub out, and do not cause confusion by interfering with
the pattern. Any lines that will appear on the book,
such as the marginal lines, may be put in with a pencil
to distinguish them.
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