- About Bookbinding -
Bookbindings Old and New
Notes of a Book-Lover by Brander Matthews
Book Binders of the Late 1800's part 5
His tooling is admirably firm and dazzlingly vigorous. Whatever the inadequacy of his workmanship in the processes which precede the gilding, -and in these his hand is steadily gaining strength, - there is no disputing his decorative endowment. He brought to the study of bookbinding an alert intelligence, a trained mind, and a determination to master the secrets of the art. He does all his own work, being both forwarder and finisher, unaided even by an apprentice, although his wife (a daughter of Richard Cobden) has taken charge of the sewing. He designs his own tools, having them cut especially for him. Even the letters he uses were drawn for him by Miss May Morris; and he makes a most artful use of lettering, - working initials, names, titles, and mottos into his design, and making them an integral and essential part of the scheme of decoration. He has studied most lovingly the methods of "Le Gascon," and he has assimilated some of the taste of that master of the art; it is from "Le Gascon," no doubt, that Mr. Cobden-Sanderson caught the knack of powdering parts of his design with gold points, stars, single leaves, and the like - a device giving the utmost brilliancy to the design if used skillfully.
Mr. Cobden-Sanderson will not work to order. He binds only those books that please him, and he binds them as he pleases. He is independent of the caprices of his customers. He does not undertake many volumes, and with each he does his best. When a novice, trying his 'prentice hand, he wasted himself more than once on volumes of no great value, and put a fifty dollar binding on a book not worth five - a pecumary solecism, an artistic incongruity. Of late he has not fallen into this blunder, and he prefers to spend himself on books of permanent value in the original edition. Of course he never repeats himself; every one of his bindings is as unique as a picture; there are no replicas. Every cover is composed for the volume itself, and is often the outcome of a loving study of the author, a decorative scheme having been suggested by some representative passage.
