by Gertrude Burford Rawlings
New York D.Appleton and Company 1901
shell covers with silver mounts and ornaments, which have a very handsome effect, and the mosaic decorations of the
same period. This mosaic decoration was made by inlaying minute pieces of differently colored leathers, and finishing
them with gold tooling. It was work which called for great dexterity in manipulation, and in skillful hands the result was
very pretty and graceful.
Even from this slight sketch it will be seen that book bindings have always presented unlimited opportunities for
originality on the part of the worker, as regards both design and material. Wood and leather, gold and silver, ivory and
precious stones, colored enamels, impressed papier-mâché, gold tooled leather and embroidered fabric, pasteboard
and parchment, have all been pressed into the service, and the subject of book bindings is a fascinating branch of
book history. But form their nature bindings are difficult to describe in an interesting manner, and words can hardly do
justice to them without the aid of facsimile illustrations.
The ordinary bindings of to-day are practically confined to two styles, the cloth and the leather, and those combinations
of leather and cloth or leather and paper which make the covers of half-bound and quarter-bound volumes. Cloth
binding, the binding of the nineteenth century, is an English invention, and came into use in 1823. On the Continent
books are still issued in paper covers and badly stitched, on the assumption that if worth binding at all, they wiII be
bound by the purchaser as he pleases. But although the English commercial cloth binding is often charged for far too
highly, no one can deny its convenience, and its superiority over the paper undress of foreign works. Moreover, it is
the homely, everyday garb of the great majority of our favorite volumes, and though, no doubt, it is delightful to
possess books sumptuously bound, book-lovers of less ambition, or of lighter purses than those who can command
such luxuries, are not very much to be pitied.
There is something characteristic about a book in a cloth cover which it loses when it dons the livery of its owner's
library. Cloth is not only more varied in texture, but admits of greater freedom and variety of design than does leather,
so there is something to be said in its favor in spite of the contention that direct handicraft is preferable to handicraft
which works through a machine, and that one of a batch of bindings printed by the thousand is not to be compared with
a single specimen of tooled leather which has cost a pair of human hands hours of careful toil. The little libraries with
which so many of us have to be contented owe their bright and cheerful appearance to the cloth covers of the books,
in which each book stands out with modest directness, wearing its individuality instead of losing it in a crowd of
neighbors dressed exactly like itself. In a series uniformly bound, however, a family likeness is not only admissible, but
pleasing. It gives an idea of unison among, perhaps, widely differing individuals. But the unison which is becoming to a
family makes a community monotonous.
On the other hand, something stronger than cloth is necessary when books are to be subjected to special wear and
tear, and desirable when a volume is to be particularly honored or when the library it is to enter is large and important.
Protection is the first purpose of a binding, and endurance its first quality, and the experience of centuries has shown
that the walls in the fairy-tale were right when they said,
“Gilding will fade in damp weather,
To endure, there is nothing like LEATHER."
In which, perhaps, the book-lover will see a parable. For, after all, the book is the thing, and the cover a mere
circumstance, and those who wish to make books merely pegs to hang bindings upon deserve to have no books at all.
Yet it is right that though the binding should not be raised above the book, it should be worthy of the book, and much
of the cheap and good literature which is now within the reach of all who care to stretch out their hands for it, is clothed
in a manner to which no exception can be taken on any score. Those who have not realised how charming some of the
modern bookbinding’s can be, should consult the winter number of Tile Studio for 1899-1900.