An Essay in the History of Gold-Tooled
Bindings by Herbert P. Horne
London 1894
16
practiced by English workmen at the early part of this century, nor that, which is employed at
the present day by the Parisian bookbinders. The English workman squared the back, and fore,
edges of his boards, and when he had laced them to the book, ploughed and squared the head,
and tail, edges of the book and boards together; ploughing, lastly, the fore edge of the book.
The Parisian binder, having squared the back edge of his boards, and having laced them to the
book, cuts the edges of the volume, before he squares the boards.
Fine and rare books, the edges of which have already been cut, should not, as a rule, be recut:
but their edges should be left, and gilt, as the phrase is, in the rough. The edges of a new and
uncut book, which is to be finely bound for the first time, should be completely cut: but a portion
of the rough edge should be preserved, in proof of the discretion with which the cutting has
been done. A broad margin has been said to be the glory of a book: but in recent years, the
craze for wide margin has been carried to a degree of absurdity, especially in large-paper
editions; in so much, that it becomes necessary to qualify this assertion, and to say, that the
glory of a book consists, not in an unduly broad, but in a finely proportioned, margin. In how
many instances of recent (editions de luxe,' if the binder could but have a sense and knowledge
of proportion, might not the plough be used with a liberty, which would be terrible to the
prejudices of the collector, but consoling to the finer sense of the artist?
DECORATION OF THE EDGES .-After the book has been cut, the decoration of the edges is next
to be considered. Without doubt, the most elegant of decorated edges, and the one most
proper to a book, which is intended to be elaborately tooled in gold, is a gilt edge. The method
of gilding book-edges does not materially differ from that employed by the ordinary gilder. The
boards having been thrown back, the book is placed in the press, with the head or tail, edge
level with the cheeks. The book is then screwed up in the press: and the edge is scraped, until
it is perfectly smooth; care being taken, that its whole surface is equally worked. The edge is
next painted with a mixture of black-lead, red chalk, and water; this surface is dried, polished
with a brush, and freely coated with glare; and the gold-leaf is, then, applied, while the glare is
still wet. Glare, which, from this time, becomes an important material of the bookbinder's craft,
consists in the white of eggs, well beaten up, and strained. When the gilding has become
thoroughly dry, it is burnished with an agate burnisher.