- About Bookbinding -
Famous Book Binders
Grolier and The Renascence Part 4
It is only some understanding of the technique of an art which enables us to appreciate its triumphs. The art of the bookbinder is limited by the "tools" he uses. A" tool," in the parlance of the trade, is the brass implement at the end of which is cut the little device, ornament, or part of an ornament, that is separately to be transferred to the leather.
Every figure, every leaf, every branch, every part of the design, is made of one or more tools. The binder conceives his general scheme of decoration, knowing his tools; and it is by a combination and repetition of these tools that he forms his design. One might almost say that tools are style; certainly it is obvious that the tools changed form concurrently with every modification of taste in bookbinding; and a study of the tools, as they have been modified during the past three centuries, is essential to any real understanding of the art of bookbinding.
Thus we see that when Grolier began to gather his library, the binder used tools copied from Aldine typographic devices, and impressed in gold on the cover of a book that figure which on the printed page was a solid black. But the finer taste of the Renascence soon discovered that, although the broad black of the Aldine devices was pleasing on a white page, an excess of solid gold was less satisfactory on the side of a book. So they made these tools sometimes hollowed, - that is, in outline merely, which lightened them instantly, - and sometimes azured - that is, crossed by horizontal lines, as in the manner of indicating" azure" in heraldry. Then, having the same device in three different values where before they had but one, the adroit binder was able to vary and combine them as he needed solid strength or easy lightness.
The next step was to increase the variety and the complication of the interlacing bands and it is these interlacing bands which are perhaps the chief characteristic of the Grolier bindings.
Instead of being indicated by two fine lines of gold, the bands were marked out by three lines. Finally, the bands traced by plain gold tooling were enriched by paint. Adroitly contrasted colors were chosen to fill up the hollow bands which twisted above and below one another all over the cover of the book. To-day these painted ribbons and the gilding of the design are sadly dulled by the years; but when they were fresh, nothing could have been more magnificently resplendent than this polychromatic decoration.
On one or the other side of Grolier's books was the legend "Io. Grolierii et amicorum," a form which M. Le Roux de Lincy thinks he may have borrowed from his friend Maloli, an Italian collector, of whom almost nothing is known, although his books are greatly sought after - Grolier had several of them. M. Clement de Ris, the author of a pleasant volume on the" Amateurs d'Autrefois," doubts whether Grolier ever lent his books, despite this altruistic declaration. But M. Le Roux de Lincy has been able to trace not a few duplicates and triplicates from Grolier's collection, - he has even found five copies of the same Aldine edition of Vergil, - whence it is fair to conclude that the book-lover meant the legend to be interpreted in the most liberal manner, in that he stood ready to give his books to his friends, even though he was not willing to lend them.
Indeed, to lend a beloved volume is the last thing a true bibliophile can be coaxed to do, although the lending of books was a form of charity specially recommended by a Council of Paris so far back as 1212. We know that Grolier gave four of the best of his books to the father of J. A. de Thou.