THE ART OF THE BOOK
THE ART OF
THE BOOK
A REVIEW OF SOME
RECENT EUROPEAN
AND AMERICAN WORK
IN TYPOGRAPHY, PAGE
DECORATION & BINDING
CHARLES HOLME, EDITOR
MCMXIV
“THE STUDIO” LTD.
LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK
PREFATORY NOTE
The Editor desires to express his thanks to the following who have
kindly assisted in the preparation of this volume:—to the Trustees of
the Kelmscott Press for permission to reproduce the pages printed in
the three types designed by William Morris, and to Mr. Emery Walker
for the valuable assistance he has rendered in the reproductions of
these particular pages, and also the page of Proctor’s Greek type; to
Mr. Lucien Pissarro for allowing the three pages by the Eragny Press
to appear; to Mr. C. H. St. John Hornby, whose page by the Ashendene
Press has been especially set up for this volume; to Mr. Philip Lee
Warner for permission to show two pages by the Riccardi Press; to
Messrs. Chatto & Windus for the page by the Florence Press; to Messrs.
Methuen & Co. for the page printed in the “Ewell” type; to Messrs. H.
W. Caslon & Co. for the page of their new “Kennerley” type; to Messrs.
P. M. Shanks & Sons for the page of “Dolphin Old Style” type; to Mr. F.
V. Burridge for the two pages especially set up at the London County
Council Central School of Arts and Crafts; to Messrs. George Allen &
Co. for permission to reproduce the two pages designed by Mr. Walter
Crane; to Mr. Percy J. Smith for the book-opening designed by him; to
the Cuala Press, the Vincent Press, the Reigate Press, Messrs. B. T.
Batsford, Messrs. J. M. Dent & Sons, Messrs. George Routledge & Sons,
Messrs. Siegle, Hill & Co., for permission to show various pages from
their publications; and to Mr. J. Walter West, R. W. S., for the pages
designed by him.
The Editor’s thanks are due to the various bookbinders whose work has
been lent for illustration, and to Monsieur Emile Lévy for the loan of
the photographs of Mr. Douglas Cokerell’s bindings; to Mr. John Lane
for permission to illustrate the cover designs by Aubrey Beardsley; and
to Messrs. George Newnes for the end-paper design by Mr. Granville Fell.
The Editor is also indebted to the various Continental and American
publishers, printers, type-founders, bookbinders and book-decorators
who have kindly placed at his disposal the examples of their work shown
in the foreign sections; particularly to Herren Gebrüder Klingspor, the
Bauersche Giesserei, Herr Emil Gursch, Herr D. Stempel, Herren Genzsch
and Heyse, MM. G. Peignot et fils, Monsieur L. Pichon, and Monsieur
Jules Meynial for the pages of type especially set up for this volume.
LIST OF ARTICLES
PAGE
British Types for Printing Books. By Bernard H. Newdigate 3
Fine Bookbinding in England. By Douglas Cockerell 69
The Art of the Book in Germany. By L. Deubner 127
The Art of the Book in France. By E. A. Taylor 179
The Art of the Book in Austria. By A. S. Levetus 203
The Art of the Book in Hungary —— 231
The Art of the Book in Sweden. By August Brunius 243
The Art of the Book in America. By William Dana Orcutt 259
GREAT BRITAIN
BRITISH TYPES FOR PRINTING BOOKS. BY BERNARD H. NEWDIGATE
To judge rightly of the good or bad features of types used for printing
books, we should have some acquaintance at least with the earlier forms
from which our modern types have come. Let us therefore glance at the
history of the letter from which English books are printed to-day.
The earliest printed books, such as the Mainz Bible and Psalters,
were printed in Gothic letter, which in its general character copied
the book-hands used by the scribes in Germany, where these books were
printed. In Italy, on the other hand, the Gothic hand did not satisfy
the fastidious taste of the scholars of the Renaissance, who had
adopted for their own a handwriting of which the majuscule letters
were inspired, or at least influenced, by the letter used in classical
Rome, of which so many admirable examples had survived in the old
monumental inscriptions. For the small letters they went back to the
fine hand which by the eleventh and twelfth centuries had gradually
been formed out of the Caroline minuscules of the ninth and had become
the standard book-hand of the greater part of Latin Europe. When the
Germans Sweynheim and Pannartz brought printing into Italy, they first
printed books in a very beautiful but somewhat heavy Roman letter of
strong Gothic tendency. It seems, indeed, to have been somewhat too
Gothic for the refined humanistic taste of that day; and when they
moved their press to Rome, it was discarded in favour of a letter more
like the fashionable scrittura umanistica of the Renaissance. Other
Italian printers had founts both of Gothic and of Roman types. The
great Venetian printer Jenson, for instance, and many of his fellows
printed books in both characters; but the Roman gradually prevailed,
first in Italy, then in Spain and France, and later on in England.
In Germany, on the other hand, the cradle-land of the craft, Gothic
letter of a sadly debased type has held its own down to this day. Even
in Germany, however, the use of Roman type has gained ground of late
years, nationalist feeling notwithstanding.
The Roman type used by the early Italian printers is, then, the
prototype from which all other Roman founts are descended. Its
development may be traced through such Roman type as was used by Aldus
at Venice, by Froben at Basle, by the Estiennes in Paris, by Berthelet
and Day in London, by Plantin at Antwerp, by the Elzevirs at Leyden
and Amsterdam, and by printers generally right through the seventeenth
century and the greater part of the eighteenth. Through all these
years types still kept what modern printers call their “old-face”
character, which they had acquired from the scrittura umanistica of
the Italian Renaissance. In the seventeenth century the letters of the
Roman alphabet began to acquire certain new features at the hands of
the copper-plate engravers, who supplied the book illustrations of
the period. Working with the burin instead of the pen, they naturally
used a sharper and finer line and also modified somewhat the curves
of the letters, which tended to become more stilted and less open.
The tail of the “R,” for instance, which in Jenson’s type is thrust
forward at an angle of about forty-five degrees, at the hands of some
of the seventeenth-century engravers tends to drop more vertically, as
in the “R” of “modern” type, the development of which we are seeking
to trace. How far and how soon the lettering of the engravers of
illustrations came to modify the letters cast by the type-founders is a
question which invites further research. A material piece of evidence
is supplied by the “Horace” printed by John Pine in 1733. Instead of
being printed from type, the text of this book, together with the
ornaments and illustrations, was printed from engraved copperplates.
In date it was some sixty years prior to the earliest books printed
in “modern-faced” type in this country; yet in the cut of the lines
and the actual shape of the letters many distinguishing features of
the “modern” face may already be traced. What these features became
may be seen best by comparing an alphabet of the “old” with one of the
“modern” face printed below it:
[Illustration]
The “modern” tendency may be seen in certain features of the types
designed by Baskerville, who printed his first book in 1757; but it is
not nearly so pronounced as in Pine’s “Horace,” engraved twenty-four
years earlier. Baskerville’s editions had an enormous vogue, not only
in this country but on the Continent also, where they had considerable
influence on the style of printing which then prevailed. Amongst those
who felt this influence was Giambattista Bodoni, a scholar and printer
of Parma, which city has lately kept the centenary of his death. To
Bodoni more than anyone else the so-called “modern-face” is due. He
cast a large number of founts, narrow in the “set” or width of the
letters as compared with their height, and having the excessively
fine lines and the close loops and curves which are characteristic of
that face. Like Baskerville he printed his books with very great care
on a spacious page in large and heavily-leaded type; and although an
occasional protest was raised against the ugliness of his letter, his
books caught the taste of his day, and his type was copied by all the
English type-founders of the time. The new fashion completely drove out
the older tradition, which dated from the very invention of printing;
and from the closing years of the eighteenth to the middle of the
nineteenth century books were printed almost exclusively in
“modern-faced” type.
The older and more authentic letter had its revenge in 1843, when
the publisher, William Pickering, arranged with his friend Charles
Whittingham, the printer, to produce a handsome edition of Juvenal
as a “leaving-present” for Eton; and the book was to be printed from
the discarded type first cut by William Caslon about the year 1724.
Prior to that time English printers had gone to Holland for most of
their type; but Caslon’s types surpassed in beauty any hitherto used
in England, and the best English printing had been done from them till
near the end of the century, when they were driven out by the “modern”
face. Before the Juvenal was issued, a romance entitled “The Diary
of Lady Willoughby,” dealing with the period of the Civil Wars, was
also printed in old-faced type cast from William Caslon’s matrices,
so as to impart to the book a flavour of the period at which the
diarist was supposed to be writing. It was the day of Pugin and of
the Gothic revival; and the public taste was won by the appearance of
this book, printed in old-fashioned guise in the selfsame type which
had been cast aside half a century before. Type-founders are generally
quick to follow one another’s lead in new fashions; and before long
every type-founder in England had cut punches and cast letter in
that modified form of Caslon’s old-faced type which printers call
“old-style.” Mr. Adeney of the Reigate Press has used an “old-style”
fount in the extract from Camden’s “Britannia” reproduced on a very
small scale on page 57. The “old-style” character and the points in
which it is either like or unlike the more authentic old-faced letter
may be seen by comparing the two. The lower of these founts is the
“old-style”:
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The favour which the revived “old-face” and the new “old-style”
letter won for themselves in the middle of last century has suffered
no diminution since. The ugly “modern-face,” which we owe to Bodoni,
is still used almost exclusively for certain classes of work and
alternatively for others; so that the printer is bound to be familiar
with all three. For book-printing at the present day the “old style”
and the “old-face” are used much more than the modern.
During the fifty years that followed the revived use of Caslon’s types
by the Whittinghams there is little else to record about the designs
of the types used for printing books, until about the year 1890, when
William Morris set himself to design type, fired thereto by a lecture,
given by Mr. Emery Walker, on the work of the Early Printers, to which
he had listened. In the “Note by William Morris on his aims in founding
the Kelmscott Press,” printed after his death, he writes of the
purpose which led him to print books, and of the character he sought
to give his letter: “I began printing books with the hope of producing
some which would have a definite claim to beauty, while at the same
time they should be easy to read and should not dazzle the eye by
eccentricity of form in the letters. I have always been a great admirer
of the calligraphy of the Middle Ages and of the earlier printing
which took its place. As to the fifteenth-century books, I had noticed
that they were always beautiful by force of the mere typography, even
without the added ornament with which many of them are so lavishly
supplied. And it was the essence of my undertaking to produce books
which it would be a pleasure to look upon as pieces of printing and
arrangement of type.... Next as to type. By instinct rather than by
conscious thinking it over, I began by getting myself a fount of Roman
type. And here what I wanted was letter pure in form; severe without
needless excrescences; solid without the thickening and thinning of
the line, which is the essential fault of the ordinary modern type and
which makes it difficult to read; and not compressed laterally, as
all later type has grown to be owing to commercial exigencies. There
was only one source from which to take examples of this perfected
Roman type, to wit, the works of the great Venetian printers of the
fifteenth century, of whom Nicholas Jenson produced the completest
and most Roman characters from 1470 to 1476. This type I studied with
much care, getting it photographed to a big scale, and drawing it over
many times before I began designing my own letter; so that, though I
think I mastered the essence of it, I did not copy it servilely; in
fact, my Roman type, especially in the lower case, tends rather more
to the Gothic than does Jenson’s. After a while I felt I must have a
Gothic as well as a Roman fount; and herein the task I set myself was
to redeem the Gothic character from the charge of unreadableness which
is commonly brought against it. And I felt that this charge could not
be reasonably brought against the types of the first two decades of
printing: that Schoeffer at Mainz, Mentelin at Strassburg, and Günther
Zainer at Augsburg, avoided the spiky ends and undue compression which
lay some of the later types open to the above charge.... Keeping my
end steadily in view, I designed a black-letter type which I think I
may claim to be as readable as a Roman one, and to say the truth I
prefer it to the Roman. This type is of the size called Great Primer
(the Roman type is of ‘English’ size); but later on I was driven by the
necessities of the Chaucer (a double-columned book) to get a similar
Gothic fount of Pica size.”
Pages printed in each of Morris’s three founts of type are reproduced
here on pages 14, 15, 17 and 19. It is interesting to compare Morris’s
“Golden” type—so he called his Roman fount after the “Golden Legend,”
which he printed from it—with the Roman letter of the Italian
printers, which he studied with so much care before he began to design
his type. The “Golden” type is much heavier in face than, say, that of
Jenson; and it certainly lacks the suppleness and grace of the Italian
types generally. As a point of detail we may notice especially the
brick-bat serifs used on Morris’s capital “M” and “N,” giving a certain
clumsiness to these letters. The two Gothic letter founts which Morris
designed, on the other hand, must be regarded as amongst the most
beautiful ever cast. William Morris’s types should be judged on the
setting of richly decorated borders which he designed for his pages.
Adding to these the designs of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, engraved on wood
by W. H. Hooper, we have in the Kelmscott “Chaucer” the most
splendid book which has ever been printed.
The “Golden” type of the Kelmscott Press was copied freely in America
and sent back to the country of its birth under several different
names. In somewhat debased forms it had a vogue for a time as a
“jobbing” fount amongst printers who knew little or nothing of the
Kelmscott Press; but the heaviness of its line and also its departure
from accepted forms kept it from coming into general use for printing
books. The interest awakened by the books printed by William Morris at
Hammersmith tempted many more to set up private presses or to design
private founts of type when the work of the Kelmscott Press came to an
end after Morris’s death, which took place in 1896. Most of such founts
and the best of them followed more or less closely the letter of the
early Italian printers, which, as we have seen, are the prototypes of
our book letter of to-day. Even before the founding of the Kelmscott
Press Mr. Charles Ricketts had designed books, using some of the “old
style” faces which were in general use. When the Kelmscott Press books
appeared, he too was won over by what he called the “golden sunny
pages” of the early Italian printers, and designed for himself the
“Vale” type. In weight and general appearance it bears considerable
likeness to Morris’s “Golden” type, and in some ways is an improvement
on it. Mr. Ricketts afterwards had the same letter cast in a smaller
size for his edition of Shakespeare, whence its name of the “Avon”
type. He also designed another letter, the interest of which lies
in certain experiments towards the reform of the alphabet which it
embodies. In the “King’s” type, as Mr. Ricketts called it, many of the
minuscule letters, such as e, g, t, are replaced by small majuscules.
Such a departure from traditional use is too violent to give pleasure,
and only two or three books were printed in this letter. The three Vale
Press founts and also the punches and matrices were destroyed when the
Press ceased publishing.
Mr. T. J. Cobden-Sanderson and Mr. Emery Walker set up the Doves Press
at Hammersmith in 1900, and designed and got cast for themselves a
fount of type which follows Jenson’s Roman type very closely. It
differs from it chiefly in the greater regularity of its lines, and
also in the squareness and brick-bat shape of some of the serifs, which
are, however, less conspicuous than in Morris’s “Golden” type. The
Doves Press books, unlike those of the Kelmscott Press, are entirely
free from ornament or decoration, and owe their remarkable beauty to
what Morris styled the architectural goodness of the pages and also to
the fine versal and initial letters done by Mr. Edward Johnston and Mr.
Graily Hewitt. Later on we shall have something more to say about the
work of these men and their school.
The type of the Ashendene Press (p. 23) is modelled from that in which
Sweynheim and Pannartz printed books at Subiaco, and which, as we
have seen, they replaced by a purer Roman letter more in accord with
the humanistic taste of their day. Morris himself designed, but never
carried out, a fount of letter after the same fine model. It is a
Roman type, with many Gothic features. The folio “Dante,” the “Morte
Darthur,” the Virgil and the other books which Mr. St. John Hornby has
printed from it in black and red, with occasional blue and gold, are
superb examples of typography.
Mr. Lucien Pissarro’s little octavos have a certain personal charm of
their own distinct from anything that is found in the more weighty
volumes which have issued from the other private presses. The first
books which he produced at his Eragny Press were printed from the
Vale type belonging to his friend Mr. Ricketts. In 1903 he began
printing from the “Brook” type (pp. 25 to 29), which he had designed.
Although in this article we are concerned chiefly with his types, it
is impossible to withhold a tribute of praise for the graceful beauty
of these little books, which they owe even more to the admirable
way in which their different elements have been combined—type,
wood-engraving, colour, printing and binding, all of them the work of
Mr. and Mrs. Pissarro themselves—than to the individual excellence of
any one of them.
Mr. C. R. Ashbee’s “Endeavour” type was designed by him for use at
the Essex House Press, which he first established at Upton in the
eastern suburbs of London and afterwards removed to Chipping Campden in
Gloucestershire. It owes nothing to the types of the early printers,
and taken by itself is not pleasing; but it makes a very handsome page
when printed in red and black, as in the Campden Song Book. The type
was also cut in large size for King Edward’s Prayer Book, one of the
most ambitious ventures of any private press.
Mr. Herbert P. Horne has designed three founts, all of them inspired by
the Roman letter of the early Italian printers. The “Montallegro” type
(p. 265), the first in order of date, was designed for Messrs. Updike
and Co., of the Merrymount Press, Boston, and hardly falls within the
scope of this article. In 1907 he designed for Messrs. Chatto and
Windus a fount called the “Florence” type (p. 31), from which editions
of “The Romaunt of the Rose,” “The Little Flowers of St. Francis,” A.
C. Swinburne’s “Songs before Sunrise,” R. L. Stevenson’s “Virginibus
Puerisque” and also his Poems have been printed at the Arden Press
on behalf of the publishers. It is a letter of a clean, light face,
and in many ways might serve as a model for a book type for general
use. The capital letters used in continuous lines, as Aldus and other
great Venetians delighted to use them, are especially charming. Mr.
Horne’s Riccardi Press type (pp. 33 and 35) was designed for the Medici
Society, and many fine editions, amongst them a Horace, Malory’s “Morte
Darthur,” and “The Canterbury Tales,” have been printed from it. It is
a little heavier in face than its predecessor, the “Florence,” and is a
little further removed from the humanistic character. The type has also
been cast successfully in a smaller size.
To the number of privately owned founts of type we must add the “Ewell”
(p. 37), designed by Mr. Douglas Cockerell for Messrs. Methuen and
Co., who will shortly publish the first book to be printed from it,
an edition of the “Imitatio Christi.” It is a heavy but very graceful
letter, based on one used by the Roman printer Da Lignamine.
One of the most interesting of the privately owned founts is the
“Otter” Greek type designed by the late Mr. Robert Proctor, and shown
in the page from the Odyssey printed on page 43. The Greek letter from
which most of our school classics are printed is a descendant of the
cursive type introduced by Aldus at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, and has the merit neither of beauty nor of clearness. The
majuscules are especially ugly, being nearly always of the “modern”
type which we owe to Bodoni. Proctor took as his model the finest of
the old Greek founts, which was that used in the Complutensian Polyglot
printed in 1514.
Amongst the types sold by the founders for general use none have
enjoyed such successive favour as Caslon’s “Old-Face” in its various
sizes; and it is a splendid tribute to the excellence of this letter
that at this day, nearly two centuries since it was first cut, it is
being used more than any other face of type for printing fine books.
This Special Number of The Studio is printed from Caslon’s “Old-Face”
type, as well as the pages, set up at the Central School of Arts and
Crafts, which are shown on pages 45 and 47. The fame of Caslon’s letter
brought other rivals into the field besides Baskerville. One of these
was Joseph Fry, a Bristol physician, who took to letter-founding in
the year 1764, and cut a series of type somewhat like Baskerville’s.
A few years later, however, the Caslon character seems again to have
recovered its old ascendancy, and Fry put on the market a new series
in acknowledged imitation of Caslon’s. Both these series of Fry’s have
been reissued within the last few years by Messrs. Stephenson and
Blake, of Sheffield, who, in 1906, bought the type-founding business of
Sir Charles Reed and Son, to whom Fry’s business had eventually come.
Like the revived Caslon “Old-Face” in 1843, these founts were cast from
the old matrices, or from matrices struck from the old punches, so far
as these had survived.
Since the “old-style” founts were designed about the middle of last
century, what new book types have been cast by the founders for use
by the printing trade generally have as a rule been mere variations
of letter already in vogue. The founders have drawn but little on the
wealth of beautiful book types which in the early printed books of
Italy are offered to anyone who has the good taste and the skill to
adapt them to modern needs. Messrs. Shanks and Sons, the type-founders
of Red Lion Square, have, however, gone to this source for their
“Dolphin” series (p. 41), which has many features of beauty to commend
it. It is based on Jenson’s Roman letter, somewhat thickened in the
line. The punches were cut by Mr. E. P. Prince, who also cut the
Kelmscott type and many others of the private founts.
Intelligent study of Italian models also gives us the “Kennerley” type
(p. 39), designed by the American Mr. Goudy, which Messrs. Caslon will
shortly put on the English market. This type is not in any sense a
copy of early letter—it is original; but Mr. Goudy has studied type
design to such good purpose that he has been able to restore to the
Roman alphabet much of that lost humanistic character which the first
Italian printers inherited from their predecessors, the scribes of
the early Renaissance. Besides being beautiful in detail his type is
beautiful in the mass; and the letters when set into words seem to
lock into one another with a closeness which is common in the letter
of early printers, but is rare in modern type. The “Kennerley” type
is quite clear to read and has few features which by their strangeness
are likely to waken the prejudice of the modern reader. Since the first
Caslon began casting type about the year 1724, no such excellent letter
has been put within reach of English printers.
So large is the proportion of books which are now set in type by
machinery that, however much our sympathies may make us prefer the
hand-set book, we cannot but be concerned for the characters used
in machine composition. Type set by machinery generally seems to be
inferior in design to that set by hand; but the inferiority is in the
main accidental, and is probably due to a lesser degree of technical
skill shown either in the designing or in the process of punch-cutting,
which is itself done by machinery. One or two admirable faces of type
have, however, been produced by the Lanston Monotype Company for
setting by the monotype machine. One of these is the “Imprint” type,
adapted from one of the founts used by Christopher Plantin, the famous
printer of Antwerp, in the late sixteenth century. The letters are bold
and clear, and pages set in them are both pleasant to look at and easy
to read. At the same time the type is sufficiently modern in character
not to offend by any features unfamiliar to the ordinary reader.
No art can live by merely reviving and reproducing past forms, and in
reviewing the share taken by the type-founders of the past and of the
present in the art of the book one cannot help considering by what
means and from what quarter good types are to be designed and cut in
the future. We have seen that the early printers took their inspiration
from the best of the contemporary book-hands. The invention of
printing, however, killed the art of the scribe, and with it perished
the source whence during the ages past life and beauty had been given
to the letters of the alphabet and to the pages in which they were
gathered. Henceforth the letters were cast in lead, and there was no
influence save the force of tradition to make or keep them beautiful.
Whatever change they underwent was for the worse, unless indeed it
was a mere reversion to forms or features which for a while had been
abandoned.
Conscious of this downward tendency, which he seems to look upon as
inevitable and irresistible, Mr. Guthrie, of the Pear-tree Press
at Bognor, has renounced type altogether, and now prints books,
like William Blake, from etched plates inscribed with his own fine
book-hand. Such a method is, of course, not practicable for the vast
majority of books, even if we were willing to forgo the many fine
qualities which are presented in a well-printed book. Neither is
any such counsel of despair warranted, for of late years the art of
the scribe itself has been renewed; and most readers of The Studio
know something of the fine work done by the school of calligraphy
established some ten years since by Mr. Edward Johnston, and still
carried on by his pupil Mr. Graily Hewitt at the Central School of
Arts and Crafts in Southampton Row, London. May not the printer look
to that school as the source whence the type-designer and type-founder
shall learn to design and cut beautiful letter for his books? Not
indeed that type-letter should be a mere reproduction of any written
hand; rather must it bear nakedly and shamelessly all the qualities
which the steel of the punch-cutter and the metal from which it is
cast impose upon it. It must be easy to read as well as fair to look
on, and besides carrying on the traditions of the past must respect
the prejudices of the present. But only a calligrapher whose eye and
hand have been trained to produce fine letter for the special needs of
the printed book can have knowledge of the manifold subtleties of such
letter and power to provide for them in the casting of types. If the
writing schools can turn out such men, they will deserve well of all
those who are interested in the art of the book. That our hope need
not be vain is shown by the fact that calligraphers trained in the
methods of the school have gone to Germany, and have there profoundly
influenced the production of modern types; and the supreme irony of it
all is that German type-founders are sending to England new types which
draw their inspiration from a London school of which the English and
Scottish type-founders seem never even to have heard.
_Note_—In the course of the preceding article the writer has had
occasion to refer frequently to the type of Nicholas Jenson in its
relation to the modern British founts. The Editor has therefore
included amongst the examples shown a page from the “Pliny,” printed by
Jenson in 1476, for purposes of comparison and reference. It will be
found on page 21.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: (_Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the
Kelmscott Press_)
KELMSCOTT PRESS: PAGE FROM “THE WORKS OF GEOFFREY CHAUCER” PRINTED IN
THE “CHAUCER” TYPE DESIGNED BY WILLIAM MORRIS. ILLUSTRATION BY SIR
EDWARD BURNE-JONES, BART., BORDER AND INITIAL LETTER BY WILLIAM MORRIS]
[Illustration: KELMSCOTT PRESS: PAGE FROM “THE TALE OF BEOWULF” PRINTED
IN THE “TROY” TYPE DESIGNED BY WILLIAM MORRIS (REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION
OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE KELMSCOTT PRESS)]
[Illustration: KELMSCOTT PRESS: PAGE PRINTED IN THE “GOLDEN” TYPE
DESIGNED BY WILLIAM MORRIS (REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF THE TRUSTEES OF
THE KELMSCOTT PRESS)]
[Illustration: PAGE FROM THE “PLINY” PRINTED AT VENICE BY NICOLAS
JENSON IN 1476]
[Illustration: ASHENDENE PRESS: PAGE PRINTED IN GREAT PRIMER TYPE
MODELLED UPON THE TYPE USED BY SWEYNHEIM AND PANNARTZ AT SUBIACO IN
1465]
[Illustration: ERAGNY PRESS: OPENING PAGE OF THE
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[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE BY WALTER CRANE FOR THE FIRST BOOK OF “THE
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BATSFORD LTD.]
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FINE BOOKBINDING IN ENGLAND.
BY DOUGLAS COCKERELL
Fine or “extra” binding as it is called in the trade implies that the
craftsman has done his best with the best materials. It may be plain
or decorated, but whatever work there is should be the best of which
the craftsman is capable. Printed books are largely machine-made
productions, and it would seem reasonable that machine-made books
should have machine-made covers, and it is in such covers or “cases”
that most of our books are issued. There is a general feeling that
the cost of the binding should bear some relation to the cost of the
book; but since books are turned out by the thousand from the printing
press, and fine bindings can only be made singly and laboriously by
hand, it is inevitable that in most cases such a binding costs much
more than the book it covers. This has probably been the case since
the invention of printing cheapened books, and yet there have always
been people who valued certain books highly enough to have them well
bound and decorated. For a true book-lover does not value a book at the
price it costs, and he may wish to have the words of a favourite author
enshrined in a precious cover. Some books by their nature and use call
for lavish treatment. Books used for important ceremonies, such as
altar books or lectern Bibles, can quite well be covered with ornament,
provided this ornament is good. They will be but a spot of gorgeousness
in a great church or cathedral, and should be judged in relation to
their surroundings and not as isolated articles.
There is a fashion now to value decoration in inverse ratio to its
quantity, and demand that it should be concentrated on spots, leaving
the greater part of the surface of articles bare. This is quite a
reasonable way to treat a binding, but it is not the only way. A
satisfactory binding can be made with little or no ornament, and
there is then little fear of a disastrous failure. To cover a book
all over with gold-tooled decoration is a more difficult thing to do
satisfactorily, but it can be done, and, if well done, is well worth
doing.
At the present time there are many binders working in England who are
capable of turning out work of the highest class, and fortunately
there are book-lovers here and in America with the taste and means to
commission such work. Probably, if a man were bold enough to spend
five or ten thousand pounds on binding the finest books that are being
produced at the present time, he would find, if the money were wisely
spent, that he had got a library that would be celebrated all over the
world. There is an interesting revival in the use of arms-blocks on
bindings, and when certain modern libraries come to be dispersed their
owners will be remembered by their books in the same way as are the
original owners of the many armorial bindings that have come down to
us from the past.
There are some qualities that are common to all well-bound books.
Of course abnormal books have to be treated specially, but it may
generally be said that every leaf of a book should open right to the
back. This means that all single leaves and plates should be attached
by guards, and that no overcasting or pasting-in should be allowed,
and it also means that the back should be truly flexible. The sections
should be sewn to flexible cords or tapes, the ends of these should
be firmly attached to the boards, and the back should be covered with
some flexible material, such as leather, which, while protecting the
sewing-thread or cord, shall itself add to the strength of the binding.
A fine binding will have many other features added by way of refinement
or elaboration, but unless it has these qualities it is likely to be an
unsatisfactory piece of work. A well-bound book should open well and
stay open, and shut well and stay shut. The binder can bind any book so
that it will not open, but there are some books that he cannot bind so
that they will open and shut “sweetly.”
Bookbinding is only one part of the larger craft of book production,
and to obtain a perfect book it is necessary that the workers in each
branch of the craft should have a common ideal of what a book should
be, and that each should do his part in such a way that this ideal may
be attained. Unfortunately it too often happens that the printers are
quite content if their printing looks perfect as it comes from the
press, with the result—through errors in the choice of paper or the
number of leaves to a section—that the bookbinder has unnecessary and
sometimes unsurmountable obstacles put in his way. A book that will
not open freely and that gapes like a dead oyster when it ought to be
shut is not pleasant to use, and when these faults are noticed the
binder generally gets the blame. Sometimes he deserves the blame, for
the fault may be his, but more often than not the fault lies with the
paper. To open a book a certain number of leaves of paper must be bent,
and if the paper is so stiff that a single leaf will not fall over by
its own weight, the book cannot be made to open quite satisfactorily
if bound in the ordinary way. By swinging each leaf on a guard it is
possible to bind a pack of playing-cards into something like a book
which will open and shut freely, but that this _can_ be done is no
excuse for the production of books which necessitate this drastic
treatment before they can be bound satisfactorily.
William Morris, when he founded the Kelmscott Press, did more than
revive fine book-printing; he established a tradition for books that
were eminently bindable, and the presses that followed his lead kept up
the tradition; so that we have in England a large number of beautifully
printed books that are worthy of the best binding, and that impose no
unnecessary difficulties on the binder.
Mr. Cobden-Sanderson did much to revive the use of the tight or
flexible back. In this style the leather is attached directly to the
back of the sections, and so helps to hold them firmly together. All
leather-bound books had tight backs until about a hundred years ago,
when the hollow back came into general use. A tight back should throw
up when the book is opened; that is to say the back, convex when the
book is shut, should become concave on the book being opened. This
causes a certain amount of creasing in the leather, and this creasing
is not good for gold tooling; but with a well-bound book the damage
is not serious, and important constructional features must not be
sacrificed for the sake of the decoration.
The hollow back does not crease the leather, and so is preferred by
finishers, and besides it is easier to cover a hollow back neatly than
a tight one; but the strain of opening and shutting, which should be
distributed evenly across the back, is in the hollow back thrown on
the joints, with the result that the leather is apt to break at these
places unless specially strengthened, as is the case with well-bound
account books.
While “flexible” backs that are truly flexible are undoubtedly the
best, some binders line up their backs so stiffly under the leather as
to allow little or no movement when the book is opened. This avoids the
creasing of the leather and leaves the decoration uninjured, but the
book will not open freely, and there is no virtue in such a tight back.
Leather is chosen for binding because of its toughness and flexibility,
yet binders deliberately sacrifice this last quality in order to obtain
extreme neatness or to hide faults in the forwarding.
It is the fashion in some quarters to admire as the perfection of
craftsmanship an exact and hard square edge to the boards of a book.
This can only be got by paring the leather down till it is as thin as
paper and has consequently very little strength. A softer, rounder edge
is natural to a leather-covered article, and it is unreasonable to
expect the qualities of a newly planed board in a material so wholly
different in character. The edges of the leather-covered board should
have a distinctly flat face, and clumsiness will be avoided by any
good craftsman. It is only the extreme sharpness, so much admired by
unknowing people, that is objectionable.
In the treatment of the edges of the leaves fashion has gone to two
extremes: some book-lovers demand that the edges should be entirely
uncut, while others require them to look like a solid piece of metal.
The rough edges, or “deckle,” on handmade paper is a necessary defect
due to the way the paper is made. These rough edges were always trimmed
off by the early binders because they were unsightly, difficult to turn
over, and harboured dust. Some of the shorter leaves would usually be
left untrimmed. Such short leaves are known in the trade as “proof,”
_i.e._ proof that the book has not been unduly cut down. To gild a
book-edge absolutely solid the binder must cut down to the shortest
leaves and so often has to reduce the size of the book unreasonably;
but an acceptable compromise between entirely uncut edges and solid
gilding can be arrived at if the sections of a book to be finely bound
are trimmed singly and gilt “in the rough” before sewing. This enriches
the edges but does not disguise their nature nor necessitate their
being unduly cropped.
In recent times there has been much good work done in England in the
investigation of bookbinding materials. The Royal Society of Arts
Committee on “Leather for Bookbinding” has established standards of
leather that have made it possible for binders to procure skins that
are uninjured in the process of manufacture, and bookbinding leather of
the very highest class is now being produced in England. The leather
manufacturers are able to dye leather any reasonable shade without the
use of sulphuric acid, and it is only some of the lighter fancy colours
that are unprocurable in “acid free” leather. That these “fancy” shades
are unprocurable in uninjured leather is a distinct gain, as they
mostly fade, and books bound in such leather seldom look as if they
were intended to be used.
There are various ways by which leather-bound books may be decorated,
but tooling, either in gold or blind, is by far the commonest, and it
is tooled bindings that we are considering here. “Blind” tooling is the
impression of hot tools on the leather. The most satisfactory tools for
blind work are those cut die-sunk like a seal. These, by depressing
the ground, leave the ornament in relief. Tools for gold work are cut
so that the ornament with the gold is depressed below the surface of
the leather. These tools may be used without gold, but blind tooling
produced in this way has little of the character associated with this
work when it was at its best, _i.e._ up to the end of the fifteenth
century. Gold-tooling came to Europe from the East, and preserved
a tradition of Eastern design for a very long period. The English
gold-tooled bindings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are
often strangely Eastern in the style of the decoration.
The ornamentation of fine bindings reached almost its lowest ebb in
England about the middle of last century. Of technical skill there was
never any lack, but decoration had lost vitality, and the ornamental
bindings of this time are for the most part copies or parodies of the
work of earlier binders. William Morris designed a few very beautiful
gold-tooled bindings which were covered all over with the impressions
of tools, each one of which represented a complete plant. His friend,
Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, who gave up the practice of the law to learn the
binder’s craft, produced books that are unsurpassed in the delicate
beauty of their decoration. Before his time there had been few attempts
to combine tools to form organic patterns. Mr. Cobden-Sanderson’s tools
were very elementary in character, each flower, leaf or bud being the
impression of a separate tool. These impressions were combined in
such a way as to give a sense of growth, and yet in no way overlapped
the traditional limitations and conventions of the craft. Mr.
Cobden-Sanderson got his results by sheer genius in the right use of
simple elements. He used inlays very sparingly, and his finest bindings
depend entirely on the effect of gold on leather. The style of design
which he founded has spread throughout the trade, mainly through the
teaching at the various technical schools, and it is now comparatively
rare to find an elaborate binding of recent date without some attempt
having been made to connect the tools so that they together form an
organic whole.
The use of composite tools (that is, tools which form a whole design
in themselves and do not bear any definite relationship to one
another) is now restricted to cheap bindings. The corners and centres
on the backs of school prizes are familiar, if degraded, examples of
the use of such tools. Together with the Cobden-Sanderson style of
decoration there has been a marked revival of the use of interlacement
in gold-tooled designs. Interlaced gold lines, if not so intricate
as to be bewildering, may be very beautiful, but in this, as in most
other crafts, the highly-skilled workman loves to attempt the almost
impossible, and some of the recent interlaced patterns fail on account
of their over-elaboration and consequent restlessness.