THE STUDY OF BOOKBINDING.
Too little attention has been paid, in this country at any rate, to the
fact that some knowledge about early bookbinding is essential to the
student of early printing. At first the printer was also a stationer
and bookbinder, and the three occupations were hardly clearly defined
or definitely separated within the first hundred years after the
invention of printing. Books always required some kind of binding, and
the early printer sold his books to the purchaser ready bound, though
copies seem always to have been obtainable in sheets by such as wished
them in that state. The binder ornamented his books in certain ways and
with a limited number of stamps, and there is no reason why a careful
study should not make his binding ornamentation as easily recognisable
as his woodcuts or his type. Of course the majority of early bindings
are unsigned, and therefore it is not often possible to assign
particular bindings to particular men; but comparison may enable us to
attribute them to particular districts and even to particular places,
so that they may often afford additional evidence towards placing books
which contain no information of their origin.
A very little attention paid to a binding might often result in most
valuable information, and with the destruction of the binding the
information disappears. Many years ago there came into the hands
of a certain Mr. Horn a very valuable volume consisting of three
block-books, the _Biblia Pauperum_, the _Ars Moriendi_, and the
_Apocalypse_, all bound together, and in their original binding, which
was dated. Incredible as it may seem, the volume was split up and the
binding destroyed. Mr. Horn asserted from memory that the date was
1428; of the first three figures he was sure, and of the last he was
more or less certain. Naturally the date has been questioned, and it
has been surmised that the 2 must have been some other figure which
Mr. Horn deciphered incorrectly. The destruction of the binding made
it impossible that this question could ever be set at rest, and a very
important date in the history of printing was lost absolutely.
In the last century no regard whatever seems to have been paid to
old bindings, the very fact of their being old prejudiced librarians
against them; if they became damaged or worn they were not repaired,
but destroyed, and the book rebound. Nor did they fare better in
earlier times. Somewhere in the first half of the seventeenth century
all the manuscripts in the Cambridge University Library were uniformly
rebound in rough calf, to the utter destruction of every trace of their
former history.
Casley, in his catalogue of the manuscripts in the Royal Library,
specially mentions a curious old binding, with an inscription showing
that it was made at Oxford, in Catte Street, in 1467. Even the special
note in the catalogue did not save this binding, which, if it had been
preserved, would have been one of the earliest, if not the earliest,
dated English example.
There is no need to multiply examples to show how widespread the
destruction of old bindings has been as regards public libraries;
indeed, their escaping without observation was their only chance of
escaping without destruction, In private libraries much the same thing
has happened. The great collectors of the period of Dibdin thought
nothing worthy of notice unless ‘encased’ in a russia or morocco
leather covering by Lewis or some bookbinder of the time. Nor are
collectors of the same opinion now obsolete, for many of our better
known binders can show specimens of rare and interesting old bindings
which they have been ordered to strip off and replace with something
new. Ignorance is the cause of much of what we lament. So many
collectors are ruled entirely by the advice of their booksellers and
binders, and these in their turn are influenced purely by commercial
instincts. Collectors with knowledge or opinions of their own are
beginning to see that the one thing which makes a book valuable (not
simply in the way of pounds, shillings, and pence) is that it shall be,
as far as possible, in its original condition. Our greatest books of
the seventeenth century were issued in simple calf bindings, with no
attempt at ornamentation but a plain line ruled down the cover about an
inch from the back. If a collector wants modern ornamental bindings,
let him put them on modern books, there only are they not out of place.
About the German binders, who necessarily concern us most at the
time of the invention of printing, we know very little; but, on the
other hand, there is a great deal to be learnt. Their bindings,
both of pigskin and calf, are impressed with a large number of very
beautiful and carefully executed dies, which could with a little care
be separated into groups. Many of them, curiously enough, are very
similar to some used on London and Durham bindings of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. There are the same palm-leaf dies and drop-shaped
stamps containing dragons.
It is in Germany that the earliest dated bindings are found. A copy
of the Eggesteyn forty-one line _Bible_, in the Cambridge University
Library, has the date 1464 impressed on the metal bosses which protect
the corners; and as the book is without a colophon, this date is of
importance. A binder named Jean Richenbach dated all his bindings, and
added, as a rule, the name of the person for whom they were bound.
The earliest date we have for him is 1467, and they run from that
year to 1475. Johannes Fogel is another name often found on early
German bindings. A few printers’ names occur, such as Ambrose Keller,
Veldener, Zainer, Amorbach. About the time of Koburger, great changes
were introduced into the style of German binding, a harmonious design
being produced by means of large tools, and the use of small dies given
up. The custom was also introduced of printing the title on the side in
gold. The panel stamp, so popular in other countries, was not much used
in Germany for calf books; it is found, however, on innumerable pigskin
and parchment bindings of the latter half of the sixteenth century. The
earliest of the bindings of this class have often the boards of wood;
at a later date they are almost invariably of paper or millboard. On
early French books the work is finer, but as a rule less interesting;
but the panel stamps, especially the early ones, are very good. A
very large number are signed in full. One with the name of Alexandre
Alyat, a Paris stationer, is particularly fine, as are also the series
belonging to Jean Norins. The Norman binders produced work very like
the English, no doubt because many of the books printed there were
intended especially for the English market.
The bookbinding of the Low Countries was always fine; but the great
improvement which was first introduced there was the use of the panel
stamp, invented about the middle of the fourteenth century. It was not
till after the introduction of printing, and when books were issued
of a small size, that this invention became of real importance; but
at the end of the fifteenth and during the first twenty or thirty
years of the sixteenth centuries, innumerable bindings of this class
were produced. The majority of Netherlandish panels are not pictorial,
but are ornamented with a double row of fabulous beasts and birds in
circles of foliage; round this runs a legend, very often containing
the binder’s name. _Discere ne cesses cura sapientia crescit Martinus
Vulcanius_ is on one binding; on another, _Ob laudem christi hunc
librum recte ligavi Johannes Bollcaert_. Some binders give not
only their name, but the place also—_Johannes de Wowdix Antwerpie
me fecit_. Though there are few pictorial Flemish panels, some of
these are not without interest. A number were produced by a binder
whose initials are I. P., and who was connected in some way with the
Augustinian Monastery of St. Gregory and St. Martin at Louvain. One
which contains a medallion head, a small figure of Cleopatra, and a
good deal of arabesque ornament of foliage, is his best; while another
panel, large enough for a quarto book, with a border of chain work,
and his initials on a shield in the centre, is his rarest, and is in
its way very artistic. At a still later date the binders in the Low
Countries produced some panels, which, though still pictorial, show how
rapidly the art was being debased. The designs are ill drawn, and the
inscription, originally an important part, has come to be degraded into
a piece of ornamentation without meaning, cut by the engraver purely
with that object, ignoring the individual letters or legibility of the
inscription, and anxious only that the finish which an inscription gave
to his models might be apparent to the eye in his copies. A similar
debasement is not uncommon in late English examples.
Italian and Spanish binding, though interesting in itself, affords
little information as regards printers or stationers. No bindings were
signed, and the designs are in all cases so similar as to afford little
clue to the place from which they originally came.
The earliest English bindings are extremely interesting and
distinctive. Caxton, our first printer, always bound his books in
leather, never making use of vellum or pigskin. Bindings of wrapping
vellum, which he is erroneously said to have made, were not used in
England till a very much later period. His bindings, if ornamented
at all, were ruled with diagonal lines, and in the centre of each
compartment thus formed a die was impressed. A border was often placed
round the side, formed from triangular stamps pointing alternately
inwards and outwards, these stamps containing the figure of a dragon.
The number of bindings which can with certainty be ascribed to Caxton
is necessarily small. We can, in the first place, only take those
on books printed by him, and which contain, besides this, distinct
evidence, from the end-papers or fragments used in the binding, that
they came from his workshop. Under this class we can place the cover
of the _Boethius_, discovered in the Grammar School at St. Alban’s,
an edition of the _Festial_ in the British Museum, and a few others;
and from the stamps used on these we can identify others which have no
other indication. It must always be remembered that these dies were
almost indestructible, and therefore were often in use long after their
original owner was dead. The Oxford bindings, though very English in
design, are stamped with dies Netherlandish in origin. An ornament of
three small circles arranged in a triangle occurs very often on these
bindings, and is a very distinctive one. These bindings when in their
original condition are almost always, like those of the Netherlands,
lined with vellum, and have vellum guards to the centre of the quires.
The only two copies known of one of Caxton’s indulgences were found
pasted face downwards, used to line the binding of a Netherland
printed book. Another binder, about the end of the fifteenth century,
whose initials, G. W., and mark occur on a shield-shaped die, used
always printed matter to line his bindings and make end-papers, though
they were not necessarily on vellum. All the leaves now known of the
Machlinia _Horæ ad usum Sarum_ whose provenance can be ascertained,
came from bindings by this man, scattered about in different parts of
the country. It is not known in what part of the country he worked.
Trade bindings between 1500 and 1540 form an important series. All
small books were stamped with a panel on the sides, and these often
have the initials or mark of the binder. Pynson used a stamp with his
device upon it; many others used two panels, with the arms of England
on one side and the Tudor rose on the other, both with supporters. On
the majority of these panels, below the rose, is the binder’s mark and
initials; on the other side, below the shield, his initials alone.
Not many of these binders’ or stationers’ names have been discovered,
and there are few materials to enable us to do so. Pynson and Julian
Notary’s bindings have the same devices as they used in their books,
and some of Jacobi’s have the mark which occurs on the title-page to
the _Lyndewode_ of 1506 printed for him. Reynes’ various marks are well
known and of common occurrence.
[Illustration:
_James Hyatt._
PYNSON BINDING.]
Without a distinguishing mark of some kind beyond the initials, it is
hopeless to try and ascribe bindings to particular stationers, though
a careful examination of the style or evidences as to early ownership
may help us to determine with some accuracy the country at least from
which the binding comes. Even a study of the forwarding of a binding
is of great help. The method of sewing and putting on headbands is
quite different in Italian books from those of other countries. Again,
all small books were, as a rule, sewn on three bands in England and
Normandy; in other countries the rule is for them to have four. The
leather gives sometimes a clue, _e.g._ in parts of France sheepskin
was used in place of calf. Cambridge bindings can often be recognised
from a peculiar red colouring of the leather. So little has been done
as yet to classify the different peculiarities of style or work in
these early bindings, that it can hardly be expected that much should
be known about them; at present the study is still in its infancy,
but there is no doubt that, if persevered in, it will have valuable
results. These bindings were for the most part produced, certainly in
the sixteenth century, by men who were not printers, and whose names we
have consequently few chances of discovering. All that can therefore
be done is to classify them according to style, and according to such
extraneous information as may be available. It is useless with no other
information to attempt to assign initials.
But while the bindings and the designs afford valuable information, the
materials employed in making the bindings are also of great importance.
The boards were often made of refuse printed leaves pasted together,
and were always lined, after the binding was completed, with leaves of
paper or vellum, printed or manuscript. On this subject I cannot do
better than give the following quotation from one of Henry Bradshaw’s
Memoranda, No. 5, _Notice of the Bristol fragment of the Fifteen Oes_:—
‘After all that has been said, it cannot be any matter of wonder that
the fragments used for lining the boards of old books should have
an interest for those who make a study of the methods and habits of
our early printers, with a view to the solution of some of many
difficulties still remaining unsettled in the history of printing.
I have for many years tried to draw the attention of librarians and
others to the evidence which may be gleaned from a careful study from
these fragments, and if done systematically and intelligently, it
ceases to be mere antiquarian pottering or aimless waste of time. I
have elsewhere drawn attention[40] to the distinction to be observed
between what may be called respectively _binder’s waste_ and _printer’s
waste_. When speaking of fragments of books as _binder’s waste_, I
mean books which have been in circulation, and have been thrown away
as useless. The value of such fragments is principally in themselves.
They may or may not be of interest. But by _printer’s waste_ I mean
... waste, proof, or cancelled sheets in the printer’s office, which,
in the early days when printers were their own bookbinders, would be
used by the bookbinder for lining the boards, or the centres of quires,
of books bound in the same office where they were printed. In this
way such fragments have a value beyond themselves, as they enable us
to infer almost with certainty that such books are specimens of the
binding executed in the office of the printer who printed them; and
thus, once seeing the style adopted and the actual designs used, we are
able to recognise the same binder’s work, even when there are none of
these waste sheets to lead us to the same conclusion.’
[40] Lists of Founts of Type and Woodcut Devices used by printers in
Holland in the Fifteenth Century. Memorandum No. 3. No. 14 in the
_Collected Papers_.
The number of books known only from fragments rescued from bindings is
much larger than is generally supposed. Of books printed in England
before 1530 more than ten per cent. are only known in this way; and now
that more attention is being paid to the subject, remains of unknown
books are continually being discovered.
Blades in his _Life of Caxton_ [edit. 1861, vol. ii. p. 70] gives a
most interesting account of a find of this sort in the library of the
St. Alban’s Grammar School. ‘After examining a few interesting books,
I pulled out one which was lying flat upon the top of others. It was
in a most deplorable state, covered thickly with a damp, sticky dust,
and with a considerable portion of the back rotted away by wet. The
white decay fell in lumps on the floor as the unappreciated volume
was opened. It proved to be Geoffrey Chaucer’s English translation
of _Boecius de consolatione Philosophiæ_, printed by Caxton, in the
original binding as issued from Caxton’s workshop, and uncut!... On
dissecting the covers they were found to be composed entirely of waste
sheets from Caxton’s press, two or three being printed on one side
only. The two covers yielded no less than fifty-six half-sheets of
printed paper, proving the existence of three works from Caxton’s press
quite unknown before.’
Off a stall in Booksellers Row the writer some few years ago bought for
a couple of shillings an imperfect foreign printed folio of about 1510
in an original stamped binding, lined at each end with printed leaves.
From one end came the title-page and another leaf of an unknown English
_Donatus_ printed by Guillam Faques; from the other end, two leaves,
one having the mark and colophon of a hitherto unknown book printed
by Richard Faques, and which is at present the earliest book known to
have been issued from his press. The finding of these two fragments is
further of interest as showing a connection between the two printers
called Faques.
Nor do these early fragments always come out of very old bindings.
From a sixpenny box at Salisbury the writer bought a large folio of
divinity, printed about 1700, in its original plain calf binding. The
end leaves were complete pages of the first book printed in London, the
_Questiones Antonii Andreæ_, printed by Lettou in 1480.
The boards of a book in Westminster Abbey Library, which must have been
bound at Cambridge in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, were
composed of leaves of the _Pontanus de Roma_, one of the ‘Costeriana.’
Service-books were very largely used by the bookbinders, for the
many Acts passed for their mutilation or destruction soon turned the
majority of copies into waste paper. Several copes of Henry VIII.’s
_Letters to Martin Luther_ of 1526, which remain in their original
bindings, have their boards made of such material, a practical
commentary on the King’s opinions.
Manuscripts, many of the utmost importance, have been cut up by the
bookbinders; sometimes in early days the librarian handed out what he
considered a useless manuscript to the bookbinder whom he employed.
Bradshaw notes that Edward VI.’s own copy of the Stephen’s _Greek
Testament_ of 1550 contains in the binding large fragments of an early
manuscript of Horace and Persius. Vellum was often used in early books
to line the centre of each quire so as to prevent the paper being cut
by the thread used for the sewing. Many pieces of _Donatuses_ and
_Indulgences_ have been found in this manner cut up into long strips
about half an inch wide. The copy of the Gotz _Bible_ of 1480 in Jesus
College, Cambridge, bound in London by Lettou, has the centres of the
quires lined with strips of two editions of an indulgence printed by
him, and which are otherwise unknown.
When the leaves used to line the boards of an old book are valuable
or important, they should be carefully taken out, if this can be done
without injury to the binding or to the fragments. A note should at
once be put on the fragments stating from what book they were taken,
and a note should also be put in the book stating what fragments were
taken from it. In soaking off leaves of vellum, warm water must on
no account be used, as it causes the vellum to shrink up. Indeed, it
is better to use cold water for everything; it necessitates a much
greater expenditure of time, but it is very much safer.
If the fragments are not of much importance, they should not be taken
from the binding, for the removal, however carefully done, must tend to
hurt the book. It will be sufficient to make a note of their existence
for reference at any time. When important fragments are extracted, it
is best to bind them up separately and place them on the shelves, and
not keep them loose in boxes or drawers, or pasted into scrap-books.
For many typographical purposes the fragment is as useful as the
complete book.
In conclusion, a word may be said on the methods of treating and
preserving old bindings. In the first place, a binding should never be
touched or repaired unless it is absolutely necessary; and if it is of
any value, it should be kept in a plain case. These cases should always
be made so that the side opens, not, as is more usual, open only at the
end, for then every time the book is taken out the sides are rubbed. If
they are made in the form of a book with overlapping edges, they can be
lettered on the back and stand on the shelves with other books.
If it is necessary that the binding should be repaired, nothing should
be destroyed. If, for example, a portion of the back has been lost,
what remains should be kept, and not an entirely new back put on. In
repairing calf bindings, morocco should be used, as near the colour of
the original as possible, and the grain should be pressed out. The old
end-papers should, of course, be retained, and nothing of any kind
destroyed which affords a link in the history of the book. No attempt
should be made to ornament the repaired portion so as to resemble
the rest of the binding; it serves no useful purpose, and takes away
considerably from the good appearance and value of what is left, for a
binding which has been ‘doctored’ must always be looked upon with some
mistrust.
An old calf book should never be varnished; it does not really help to
preserve it, and it gives it an unsightly appearance, besides tending
to fill up the more delicate details in the ornamentation. Some writers
recommend that old bindings should be rubbed with vaseline or other
similar preparations. Nothing is better than good furniture cream or
paste. A few drops should be lightly rubbed on the binding with a
piece of flannel; it should be left for a few minutes, until nearly
dry, and then rubbed with a soft dry cloth. Not only does this soften
the leather and prevent it getting friable, but it puts an excellent
surface and polish upon it, quite unlike that produced by varnish. When
a binding is in good condition and the surface not rubbed through, it
is best to leave it alone; if any dusting or rubbing has to be done, it
should be done with a silk handkerchief.