- About Bookbinding -
Bookbindings Old and New
Notes of a Book-Lover by Brander Matthews
The Merits of Machine Binding part 6
When we see the rather violently polychromatic cover which that most accomplished artist Jules Jacquemart placed on the book on "La Ceramique" illustrated by him, we cannot but wonder whether he would not have given us something quieter and more beautiful if the resources of modern color printing had not been ready to his hand. And yet, nothing venture, nothing have: the decorative artist, if he wishes to get outside the little circle of every day banality, must try the hazard of new fortunes as often and as boldly as the explorer or the soldier. Often he will discover strange countries fair to see, which he will annex forthwith.
Sometimes the search for novelty IS rewarded only by chance fantasticality. A volume of ghost stories by Mrs. Molesworth had a plain cloth cover, from the side of which, as one gazed at it, there seemed suddenly to start a shadowy figure due to a stamp which did no more than remove the glaze of the calico, not changing its colour. Colonel Norton's glossary of "Political Americanisms" was covered with a dark blue cloth turned inside out, and exposing a blue-gray grain, on which there was printed, in the original dark blue, the title, set off by the figure of the fearsome gerrymander. But these are trifles the casual freaks of commercial bibliopegy.