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The Technique of the Craft part 4

The process of working a design in the best manner is very tedious, so Mr. Matthews testifies, "more so than even connoisseurs imagine. First the design is made on paper, then impressed with the tools through the paper on to the leather; then the paper is removed, and the design again gone over with the tools to make the impression sharp and clear" – the leather being slightly moistened and the tools being moderately heated. "Then, after washing, sizing, and laying on the gold leaf, the design is gone over for the fourth time before one side of the cover is completed. This, having to be repeated on the other side of the volume, and the back also tooled, will afford some idea of the labor in executing the finest hand-tooling."

Often the inside of the covers is also lined with leather, and as carefully ornamented. Often certain figures in the pattern are excised, and the spaces filled with leathers of a different colour; and this polychromatic decoration is known as inlaying, or illuminating. The finisher needs to have delicacy of taste and nicety of touch; he must have a fancy to invent beautiful designs, and a firm hand to execute them; and he must not expect wide fame, much real appreciation, or high pay. It IS no wonder, therefore, that accomplished finishers are very few. Mr. Quaritch, in his catalogue of book bindings, speaks of the late Francis Bedford as the best binder who ever lived. The best forwarder, he may have been, but he was not a finisher himself, and he never had a first-class finisher in his employ. Mr. Matthews asserted that there were not more than six finishers in New York "who can even work any intricate pattern with fair ability. In London I question if the number is greater in proportion to the population; and in Paris, where the art flourishes most, where the patronage is encouraging, and the workmen have superior advantages, I doubt if the number of finishers qualified to work intricate designs in first-class manner exceeds twenty."

Anyone who was fortunate enough to see the Exhibition of Recent Bookbindings, 1860 1880, at the Grolier Club in the last days of 1890, or who will take the trouble to turn the pages of M. Octave Uzanne's "La Reliure Moderne," must confess that there are very few finishers of our time who have originality of invention, freshness of composition, or individuality of taste. But a Comparison of the best bound books of this century with those of the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries -which are the golden ages of bibliopegy, for "Le Gascon" , lived in one, and Grolier in the other - will show that the work of our time is technically far better than any which has come down to us from our ancestors. There is better forwarding and better finishing. !n the gold-tooling especially the modern workman is incomparably neater, cleaner, more exact, more conscientious, than his predecessor: the tooling of the men who bound for Grolier is to our eye inexcusably careless; clumsy irregularities mar the symmetry of the most beautifully designed arabesques, ill-balanced lines overrun their Emits, and ends are left hanging out with reckless slovenliness. The superiority of the elder binders in their incomparable fertility of conception must not blind us to the fact that in care, in thoroughness, and in other workman-like qualities, they bear a most obvious inferiority to binders of later years who have not a tithe of their ability.

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