- About Bookbinding -
Famous Book Binders
Padeloup and Derome part 3
At first, very naturally, the decoration of the outside of books was influenced by the decoration of their insides, and we find bindings the design of which was obviously suggested by the rich and lavish embellishment of medieval manuscripts, and others adorned with patterns modified but slightly from the elaborate typographic ornaments of the early printers. The Aldi were binders as well as printers, and the same devices decorated their noble folios both within and without. Geoffroy Tory, the author of "Champ Fleury," who reformed the art of type-founding and brought about the abandonment of blackletter, was a printer who was also a binder. He is supposed to have worked for his contemporary, Grolier. Mr. Story makes Raphael declare:
It seems to me
All arts are one - all branches on one tree,
All fingers, as it were, upon one hand.
The solidarity of the decorative arts, at least, is indisputable. Even the casual observer cannot but note the hints of design borrowed and lent, and paid back with interest, and borrowed again. Under Louis XIII., for example, when lace-making flourished, the bookbinders took over not a few of the lace-makers' designs, modifying them to suit the conditions of the bibliopegic art. Perhaps it is not fanciful to see something of the formal grace of the stately gardens of Le Notre reflected in the covers of the sumptuous tomes of Louis XIV., influenced for the worse, as these were, by the heavy hand of. Lebrun.
As we turn the pages of M. Marius-Michel's instructive and interesting essay, we note that " Le Gascon" used tools one design of which was suggested by contemporary embroideries; that Padeloup, with a duller sense of fitness, found models in ecclesiastical stained-glass; and that Derome was influenced by the remarkably varied and skilful work of the master ironworkers of the day.
The close interaction of the decorative arts is made obvious again when we find experts like M. Marius-Michel seeking for the source of certain of the florid designs attributed to Padeloup in the painted pottery of the regency, and in the symmetrically disposed parterres of the great gardens of Louis XIV and Louis XV. Perhaps the mosaics of Padeloup (or at any rate the turning of his attention to mosaic) are due to the example of Boule, who died only in 1732, and who carried to the highest perfection the art of incrusting in wood designs of gold and of brass, of shell and of ivory.