- About Bookbinding -

Stamped Leather

From the beginning commercial binding has concerned itself chiefly with cloth, with but an occasional venture with other fabrics,linen, or dimity, or silk. The few copies of certain single books, and of full sets of certain authors, which publishers now and again advertise as ready in half calf, in tree calf, or in crushed levant morocco are not really commercial bindings; they are more or less artistic bindings done chiefly by hand, but done wholesale. Generally they are to be avoided by all who hope to see their books really well bound, for they lack the loving care with which a conscientious craftsman treats the single volume entrusted to him to bind as best he can; and they are also without the merits of another sort which we find in the best cloth coverings. Sometimes, of course, the sets which publishers offer in leather are honestly forwarded and thoroughly finished: but for the most part they are hasty and soulless.
To the true book lover's eye no crushed levant can be too fine or too magnificent for the book he truly loves:

In red morocco drest he loves to boast,
The bloody murder, or the yelling ghost:
Or dismal ballads, sung to crowds of old,
Now cheaply bought for thrice their weight in gold.

Knowing this, some American publishers have issued the whole edition of certain books bound in full leather, and with the covers stamped in appropriate designs. Here we have the methods of the best cloth-binding applied to the best material, leather. These books are as carefully forwarded and finished as though they were hand-work; indeed, almost the only objection the purist might make against them would be the saw cuts in the back; and this objection is minimized by the fact that the volume is now permanently clothed, and that there will therefore be no need to rebind it.

Although plates were engraved even in the fifteenth century to stamp the sides of leather bound books, the practice had long ceased except so far as dictionaries, prayer books, and bibles were concerned; and even in its palmists days the plate was an imitation of a hand-tooled side, and not an original design of a nature appropriate to the individual book. It is the quality of modern commercial bookbinding that it has separated itself wholly from the traditions of hand tooling, and that it stands on its own merits. Consider the massive and substantial solidity of the side stamp Mr. Stanford White designed for the "Century Dictionary," and note how different it is in its vigorous firmness from even the most elaborate hand tooling. Technically, this dictionary cover is most interesting, for the design is impressed on damp sheepskin by a heated plate, which changes the tone of the leather, thus imparting to the decoration colour as well as relief.