- About Bookbinding -

Books in Paper Covers part 3

Perhaps the reason for this stupidly violent lack of art is to be found in a blind following of a tradition established long before the recent revival of the decorative arts in Great Britain. I have "A Comic Alphabet," designed, etched, and published by George Cruikshank, No. 23 Myddleton Terrace, Pentonville, 1837, the paper cover of which has a hint of humorous suggestion in it, perhaps, but which is emphatically empty and awkward.

To discover the immense advance made by the British in knowledge of the principles of decoration and the striking development of their skill in the application of these principles, it needs only a setting of this Cruikshank cover over against the wrapper designed by Mr. Walter Crane for the catalogue of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition held at the New Gallery in London in 1888. This is indeed a pleasure to the user, as it was obviously a pleasure to the maker. (To Mr. Walter Crane's services to children, also a labor of love, I shall return again.) Another admirable wrapper made in England although by an American this time is the fresh and characteristic cover which Mr. Joseph Pennell devised for the cheaper British edition of Mr. Laurence H utton's invaluable" Literary Landmarks of London." As quaint as Mr. Pennell's, and in its way as original, is Miss Armstrong's suggestion of a daintily embroidered napkin in which was wrapped Mrs. Herrick's pleasant advice as to "The Little Dinner."

These designs of Mr. Pennell's and Miss Armstrong's were printed in colors; and it is in colors that the most attractive of recent French paper covers have been printed, sometimes by one of the more modern processes of chromo typography, and. sometimes by the elder method of chromolithography. Here the paper cover of the published book has been influenced by the extraordinary development of the pictorial poster in France. Many of the best of the colored wrappers of recent French books have been but pictorial posters seen through the small end of the opera glass. More than once in these cursory papers on various phases of the complex art of the bookbinder has there been occasion to dwell upon the interdependence of the arts, and upon their reflex action one on the other. And here is another instance. The French pictorial poster was developed by M. Jules Cheret and his followers and rivals just in time to be of use to the publishers who wished to send forth their books clad in paper coats of many colors. The same artists - M. Cheret, M. Grasset, M. Willette - were called upon, and the book covers which they designed were conceived wholly in the spirit of the pictorial poster.

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