- About Bookbinding -

The Technique of the Craft part 2

Although these notes on the art of bookbinding as it is practiced today have to do with the work of the finisher - the artist who adorns the exterior of a volume, and not with the more humble, but not less important, labor of the forwarder - the artisan who prepares it for decoration, it may not be amiss to begin by setting forth the series of operations a book undergoes at the hands first of the forwarder, and then of the finisher; and in this explanation of technical processes I shall follow two masters of the bibliopegic art, Mr. William Matthews, from whose lecture before the Grolier Club I have already quoted, and Mr. Joseph W. Zaehnsdorf, whose handbook of "The Art of Bookbinding" came forth in a second edition in 1890. Every book-lover should understand the principles of the art of the bookbinder, and the practices of the craft; appreciation is best founded on knowledge.

Often a volume comes into the hands of the binder already bound. The books of American publishers are issued in substantial cloth covers intended to be permanent. The bindings of British publishers are frequently more temporary, and the book is loosely cased in the cloth cover, the owner being expected to rebind in leather any volume which he deems worthy of preservation. The books .Qf French publishers are issued in paper covers, merely stitched, and so are most of those of the German publishers; as Lord Houghton recorded on one of his early visits, "In Germany all the books are in sheets and all the beds without."

The first thing the binder has to do if the book is already bound is to remove the cloth cover, and then very carefully to collate the volume page by page, to see if title, preface, table of contents, list of illustrations, notes, index, maps, plates, are each and all perfect and in place. If need be, the sheets are refolded so as to make the pages true; then they are beaten by hand, or rolled in a press, which is a more hurried method, and by far less workmanlike; the beating being to compact the pages, and to give the book solidity and strength. After the beating, the loose maps and illustrations, mounted on linen guards, are inserted in their proper places. Then the sheets are sewn to the bands, and generally there should be no saw-cuts in the back of the book, and the sewing should not be "sunk-band," as it is called, but "raised-band," and as flexible as it is firm.

The volume is now prepared for the forwarder, who carries on... the work to' the point where it is ready for the finisher. The forwarder attaches the end-papers; he glues the back of the book, and rounds it; he squares the mill boards which are to serve as the sides of the book, and he laces them in by means of the bands to which the sheets have been sewn. The forwarder needs a steady hand, and, above all things, a true eye -" the important principle to be observed in forwarding is trueness. The form and shape of the book depend on the forwarder" (Matthews, p. 35).

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