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The Antiquity of Edition Binding part 3

In like manner I must avow that I do not know for certain the origin of the next labor saving device, but I think it came from Germany; and beyond all question its use was most frequent there. This was the combination of engraved blocks into a pattern more or less appropriate to the book. The binder had in stock a variety of these blocks, of different sizes and independent in subject, or related in pairs, or even in sets of four; and he would rearrange these corners, centre pieces, and panels as best he could to suit every succeeding book, availing himself also of the roll, and falling back on hand work where the occasion seemed to demand it. Careless as this method often became, it was still a crude form of design, even though the toil of the hand was minimized to the utmost.

But one step needed to be taken to get rid altogether of hand work on the cover; this was to engrave a design for the whole side of a book, and to stamp it on at a single stroke of a press. These plates plaques is the French term were probably first employed by the Italians; but the most noted of those who made early use of them was a Frenchman, Geoffroy Tory, the friend of Grolier, and the would be reformer of the alphabet. All Collectors know the plate he designed for the Book of Hours he printed, which was a staple of the book trade, and for which there was an unfailing demand. Tory's plate was original and complete in itself; but another plate contemporary with it, and also reproduced in the invaluable essay of M. Marius Michel on "La Reliure Francaise, Commerciale et Industrielle," is incomplete; it was intended to spare the time and trouble needed to adorn the book cover with the elaborately interlacing arabesques of the Grolier type; but it left to the hand of the workman the task of adding the name of the owner of the book, the scattered gold dots which greatly enriched the appearance, and a few other details here and there. It is instructive to note how adroitly the means have been adjusted to the end.

These three devices, the roll, the combination of blocks, and the plate complete or incomplete, mark different stages of the development of wholesale binding; and they existed simultaneously for centuries. M. Marius Michel declares that out of every hundred of the smaller sized volumes sent forth by the printer publishers of the sixteenth century, eighty have their sides stamped by a plate simulating handwork. The original editions of Rabelais, of Montaigne, of Ronsard, and of Clement Marot, were issued more often than not with plate marked sides. There is in M. Marius Michel's essay a drawing of a block used to aid in the imitation of the brilliant fanfares of "Le Gascon." There is in M. Gruel's" Manuel Historique" a most sumptuous binding by Derome, in which there was no hand tooling at all, save perhaps a monogram or a coat of arms here and there; it is formed by combining corners and border pieces, and it was stamped in a press.

The chief characteristic of the early German, Italian, and French commercial binding is that it was an imitation of artistic binding done wholly by hand. It was a. humbug trying to pass itself off as something other than it really was, and failing, of course, as fraud always fails. It was forever forging the designs it found on the books of the best binders; and very often its thefts were stupid, although once in a while they were adroit. Now this copying was foolish, because in art the impersonal machine can never rival the personal hand for art is indeed only individuality. M. Zola defines art as "nature seen through a temperament" - and even in the decorative arts personality is omnipotent. But by abandoning all thought of imitating hand-work, modern commercial bookbinding has a fair chance of developing according to its own conditions. The machine has tireless power of production and absolute regularity; and it is for those who set the machine going to supply that personal touch without which all art is as naught.

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