- About Bookbinding -

The Antiquity of Edition Binding

In one of the annual volumes of "La Vie a Paris," stout tomes of cheerful gossip, intermitted now that the author is the director of the Theatre Francais, and a member of the French Academy, M. Jules Clare tie tells a pleasant anecdote of a contemporary Parisian binder who was asked to cover one of the beautiful books which M. Conquet sends forth spasmodically from his little shop, and who drew back with scorn, declaring, "Sir, I will not dishonor myself by binding a modern book."
This craftsman's pride it was, no doubt, to clothe the stately Aldine and the pigmy Elzevir in fit robes of crushed morocco, decorating them with delicate gold traceries tooled bit by bit, and lingered over lovingly. To him it would have been a sad shock, had he been told suddenly that, in the eyes of the average reader, a book is bound when it is merely cased in a cloth-cover whereon a pattern has been imprinted by machinery. Yet so it is.

Not as ours the books of old-
Things that steam can stamp and fold;
Not as ours the books of yore-
Rows of type, and nothing more.

Ours are not the books of old, but sometimes, when they are the result of taking thought and pains, they have a merit of their own; and the thing that steam can stamp and fold .may be as lovely in its way as the poet's missal of the thirteenth century, around which the illuminator's brother monks sang "little choruses of praise." The beauty of the m04e.rn book is not that of the book of yore. There will always be between them the difference which separates work done by machine from work done by hand - a difference wide enough, and deep enough, to admit of no denial. But the volumes stamped by steam may have their own charm and their own qualities- to say nothing of their superior fitness for the nineteenth century, when democracy is triumphant.

The books bound in thousands for publishers are mostly ill-bound from haste and greed, from ignorance and reckless disregard of art. But once in a way they attain a surprisingly high level. Just how excellent some modern commercial bindings are, scarcely any of us have taken time to discover; for we are prone to overlook not a few of the best expressions of contemporary art, natural outgrowths of modern conditions, in our persistent seeking for some great manifestation which we fail to find.