- About Bookbinding -
Bookbindings Old and New
Notes of a Book-Lover by Brander Matthews
Book Binders Outlook part 5
That the book lover and the bookbinder can put their heads together, it is needful that the latter should be an individual and not a factory. There must be binderies for the commercial work (of which I shall speak in the next chapter), for "edition binding," as it is called; but "extra binding," the covering of a single volume in accord with the wishes of the owner of that one book, can best be done where the artist-artisan is at liberty to meet his customer face to face, that they may talk the matter over. Most binderies are little more than factories, with many machines, and a close division of labor, and a foreman who lays out the work of the "hands." This is not the way Mr. Cobden Sanderson is able to delight us with his lovely design, nor is it the way Trautz carried on his business. An artist as independent as Mr. Cobden Sanderson, and as rigid in his independence, is best apart; he broods in solitude, and we profit by his dream. Trautz had three assistants at the most; he was his own forwarder and his own finisher: and the patron had no difficulty in dealing directly with the man who was to do the work.
Not only is this friendly relation vital to the progress of the art, but the factory system is fatal to it, when the'-.capitalist at the head of the bindery is willing selfishly to take the credit of all that is done in his shop. For a competent designer, with the proper pride of an artist, so suppressed a position is intolerable. If the forwarding and the finishing of a book are by different hands, the owner of the book ought to know it, and the two men who cooperate ought to know that he knows it.
Perhaps what the art of bookbinding is most in need of just now is the establishment of the individual binder, an artisan-artist in a shop of his own with an immediate assistant or two, and maybe a pair of apprentices. Then the binder will sign the work he' does, and the work will bear the name of the man who really did it and no other, The superiority of American wood engraving over the British is due partly at least to the fact that in the United States the engraver is one individual artist, while 'in Great Britain he is either a shop keeper or a factory hand.