- About Bookbinding -

The Merits of Machine Binding part 5

Simplicity is an ingredient of dignity, and there are book-lovers who love simplicity above all things, having a Jansenist taste even in cloth bindings. There is nothing noisy or fussy in the cover of Mr. Harold Frederic's "In the Valley," clue to the pencil of Mr. Harold Magonigle, or in the cover of Mr. Aldrich's "Sisters' Tragedy," with its severe and yet elegant myrtle wreath designed by Mrs. Whitman. To Mrs. Whitman also is due the credit for the tea leaf border of Dr. Holmes's "Over the Tea-cups" with its vigorous lettering, and its subordinate teapot of a fashion now gone by. None of Mrs. Whitman's book covers are frivolous or finicky; they have always reserve and purity.

Yet decorations of this chaste severity are not alone on our book-shelves; and there are not a few devised on other principles and compounded in another fashion. Some satisfaction there is in finding an old German woodcut border doing duty on the cover of Mr. Woodberry's "History of Wood Engraving," or in observing the apt use of the orange with its full fruit and its green leaves as they are wreathed in the arabesques of the - medallions which adorn the back and side of Mr. Lafcadio Hearn's " Two Years in the French West Indies," and which were designed by Miss Alice E. Morse, with a full understanding of the value of colour on a book cover, and an apt appreciation of the technical means whereby it is best to be attained.

It is essential to good decorative design, whatever its kind, whether it be a book cover or a wall paper, a carpet or a tapestry, a carved panel or an inlaid floor, that the artist shall recognize technical limitations, shall preserve technical possibilities, and shall be in sympathy with the materials employed. The decorative artist must be swift to seize that one of the processes presenting themselves which will best suit his immediate object. "One reason for our modern failures lies in the multitude of our facilities," suggests Mr. Lewis F. Day in his little book on the "Application of Ornament," and he adds that "the secret of the ancient triumphs is often in the simplicity of the workman's resources." Where a man has but a single tool, he must perforce devise ornament which that single tool can accomplish, or else go without ornament altogether. Out of the struggle comes strength.

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