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Book Binders of the Late 1800's part 2

But the very best of MM. Cape, Cuzin, Chambolle-Duru, De Samblancx, Gruel and Engelmann, Joly, Lortic, Marius-Michel, Niedree, Quinet, and Ruban, attains a very high standard of excellence. Now and again, no doubt, we find a French binder who has sacrificed forwarding to finishing, having made his book so solid and so stiff that it can scarcely be opened, and so compacted that if it is opened unwarily the back is broken beyond repair. Books I have seen fresh from the hands of a Parisian binder as brilliant as a jewel casket, and as hard to open as a safe-deposit vault when you have forgotten the combination.

The relatively high position held by the binders of Great Britain was momentary only, and at best it was due to the temporary decadence of the craft in France. Of late years, at least, bookbinding has shared the misfortune of most of the other fine arts in England, and has lingered in a condition only less lamentable than that of sculpture and painting because it contented itself chiefly with dull and honest imitation of the dead-and-gone masters. Every artist must needs serve his apprenticeship and follow in the footsteps of a teacher, but where Trautz, for example, sought inspiration only, Bedford and the other British binders found models which they copied slavishly. The workmanship of the bindings that left their shops was honest and thorough, but the decoration was lifeless and colorless. The British artisan forwarded conscientiously, but the finishing of the British artist was sadly to seek.

How inert the art of bookbinding was in England during nearly four-score years can be seen by glancing over the "Catalogue of Fifteen Hundred Books. Remarkable for the Beauty or the Age of their Bindings" issued by Mr. Quaritch in 1888. Here the curious inquirer will find, under numbers 1325-1345, a score of books bound by Francis Bedford, whom Mr. Quaritch declares to be the best binder who ever lived - meaning thereby, no doubt, the best forwarder; and everyone of these books is finished in imitation of some French binder. Nos. 1325 and 1326 are" bound in imitation of Derome Ie jeune," the catalogue declares frankly, in apparent unconsciousness of the hopelessly inartistic position to which this confession assigns. .the British craftsman. No. 1327 is "in imitation of Padeloup." No. 1 328 is "bound in imitation of the work of Hardy-Dumennil," a French binder not of the highest esteem among book-lovers. Nos. 1329, 133 I, 1336, and 1339 are copied from Trautz. Nos. 1334, 1335, and 1345 are "bound in imitation of Chambolle-Duru."

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