- About Bookbinding -

Book Binders of the Late 1800's

Whether the vivifying spark was borrowed from Great Britain, or whether it was brought from Germany by Trautz, the French binders soon recovered their former supremacy. Trautz is still the strongest individuality among the French bookbinders of this century, and his influence is still perceptible, though he died in 1879. He is the foremost binder of the nineteenth century, and in his influence we can perhaps detect the foundation of a school, or at least of something more than merely individual, solitary, unaided struggle toward the unknown. A t once forwarder and finisher, overseeing every operation of his craft, Trautz led the reform of bookbinding in France. He frowned upon all haste and on all labor saving devices. He never stinted time or care or hard work. He did his best always. He gave to the volumes which left his hands greater firmness, flexibility, and solidity than any other binder had ever before attempted. He caused a host of new tools to be cut, modeled on those of "Le Gascon" and Derome and Padeloup. He studied the works of these masters reverently and unceasingly, seeking to spy out the secrets of their art. He followed in their footsteps, but although he modeled himself upon them, he never copied, trying rather to imbue himself with their spirit, and to carry forward their methods to a finer perfection.

"I do not think that Trautz ever made the same binding twice; there is on every book coming out of his hands something personal, something original," M. Laugel wrote in 1879. "This man, who could make any amount of money by merely putting his name on books, is so conscientious that he' only turns out every year about two hundred volumes; he has only three workmen or workwomen; he does the drawing of ornaments and gilding himself. For those who have not seen Trautz or Thibaron (the pupil of Trautz) at work, it is almost impossible to imagine how much pains must be taken for one volume." Nothing that Trautz undertook cost more pains than his mosaics; in the two-score years from 1838 to 1878 he attempted only twenty-two of them, and of these four are now owned by New York collectors. They show, perhaps, the most originality of any of his bindings, and they reveal his characteristics most abundantly. They have the pure beauty of design which we look for in every work of decorative art, wrought with the utmost deftness and delicacy of handicraft.

Of the supremacy of the French in the art of bookbinding since Trautz led them back into the true path, no better evidence can there be than the index of binders represented prefixed to the catalogue of the Grolier Club Exhibition of Recent Bookbinding’s. New York is perhaps the most cosmopolitan of all the great cities of the nineteenth century, especially in all matters pertaining to art; and the taste of its collectors is eclectic in the best sense of that much-abused term. Of the fifty-one binders whose handiwork was exhibited at the Grolier, thirty-six lived in Paris, one at Lyons, one at Brussels, six in London, five in New York, one in Philadelphia, and one in Quebec. The artistic superiority of the French bindings shown at the Grolier was almost as marked as the numerical; of the score of bindings finest in conception and in execution, three-fourths at least were the product of Parisian workshops. There were not a few also which had come from these same shops, which were as bad as the worst which had been turned out in New York or London - misbegotten horrors of leather, "whom Satan hath bound," if it is permissible to borrow a scriptural quotation from that learned book-lover, the late Henry Stevens of Vermont.