I
Within the last five-and-twenty years there has been a marked revival in
every department of applied art. The influence of William Morris, whose
efforts in all the accessories of house decoration were for some time
only recognized by the few, has now spread to all classes. No longer
confined to the houses of the rich or of those who profess the cult of
aesthetics, it is to be found with more or less of travesty in country
rectories and suburban villas, catered for by the enterprising tradesman
on the monthly hire system. To those who remember vividly the early
Victorian surroundings of the home and their prevailing ugliness, the
complete change which has taken place has hardly yet ceased to be a
source of wonder. Nothing remains the same: from wall-paper to coal-box,
from bedroom to kitchen, all has ‘suffered a sea change.’ In any
examination of the present condition of the artistic crafts and the
promise they present of future development on a sound basis, one cannot
fail to observe that the effort to promote taste has penetrated to the
commonest objects of daily use. The thought that finds expression in
decoration has gone to salt-cellars and buttons as well as to carpets,
cabinets and books. Some industries too, that may almost be said to have
died out for lack of appreciation, have been revived on new lines and
taken up by the public with enthusiastic approval. The use of enamel in
jewellery and in combination with wrought metal may be mentioned as an
instance of this, as well as the inlaying of cabinet work not only with
coloured woods, but with pewter, ivory and pearl. The spell of
convention once broken, the imagination of the craftsman has found
relief in flying to the furthest distance from models that were till
recently his only guide. This freedom, when restrained by genuine
artistic feeling, has given in many cases excellent results; but in the
majority of cases the sole achievement has been an eccentricity that
shows few signs of a realization of what is needed in applied art and of
the laws that should govern it.
In no sphere has there been a more striking departure from the hitherto
circumscribed lines of ornamentation than in everything that relates to
books and their decorative treatment. Paper and ink, type and its
massing on the page, illustration both as a part of the text and outside
it, the materials and enrichment of the cover—all have alike undergone
fundamental reconsideration. It is, however, with bindings and not with
the other features of book production that we are now concerned; and it
is proposed in these pages to draw attention to what is being done in
England and France in a field of work that has an increasing number of
recruits and a growing and interested public.
It is now more than twenty years since the movement spoken of began to
include bookbinding. During that time there has been noted the trade
opposition to Mr. Cobden-Sanderson when he started as an amateur,
followed by an imitation in many quarters, which, to say the least of
it, is not the most subtle form of flattery. There has been also the
later influence of Mr. Douglas Cockerell—a result of his strenuous craft
teaching as well as of the work of his own hands—and the tardy
acknowledgment of professional binders that the interest of the amateur
has been productive of good even from the narrow standpoint of their
class. Nor has France escaped this wave of innovation, though there
formalism had a stronger hold even than with us, inasmuch as the
traditions of what in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had really
been more of a fine art than a craft were rooted in the country with all
the firmness that national pride could give. Finally, one may mark the
growing enthusiasm of our American neighbours in the subject and their
efforts to create a national taste in fine bindings. They show a ready
acknowledgment of what is being done outside their own country, and a
willingness to recognize that work directed by the artistic rather than
the commercial spirit must be paid for according to a standard different
to that of the ordinary tradesman.
[Illustration: 2. BOUND BY ZAEHNSDORF.]
[Illustration: 3. BOUND BY ZAEHNSDORF.]
That an increasing number of people appreciate the problem of designing
book covers may be judged from the fact that of late years nearly every
illustrated paper has had an occasional article on one or another binder
anxious to attract the public to the originality of his work. Assuming
this appreciation, we will touch briefly on the craft in England before
its revitalization during the last quarter of a century, and then pass
in review those who are now occupied with its decorative side and who
are trying to remove it from the traditional grooves in which it lay for
so long. Unfortunately, many binders doing excellent and conscientious
work, on lines far more valuable than that of pattern making, must
remain unnoticed, for it is only work that is striving after an effect
of ornament that is capable of illustration. Of this, too, the amount
has so much increased of late that it is impossible to give examples of
much that equally deserves representation with what has been selected.
For a true understanding of modern effort it is necessary to realize
that the art history of binding is an important one, especially in Italy
and France; but in this very brief review of English binding before
1850, we need not start further back than the time when gilt tooling was
brought from France. Before that period the heavier covers had been
decorated with stamps often of a very beautiful kind and impressed upon
the leather without gold. But in the reign of Henry VIII., Thomas
Berthelet, the King’s printer, first executed gold-tooled bindings, the
designs on which were frankly adopted from those that prevailed in
Italy, the models, no doubt, being found among the large number of books
imported from abroad at that time. Later on, when Italian binding as a
fine art had been merged in that of France, the influence of the latter
country is seen, as, for example, in the books bound for Thomas Wotton
in imitation of Grolier, one of the most famous collectors of any age or
country. Throughout the reigns of the Stuarts, English binding continues
to show French influence, as a glance at the books exhibited to the
public in the British Museum will show to the most casual observer. Nor
had we a binder who can be said to have shown any tendency towards a
native style till the time of the Restoration, when Samuel Mearne,
bookbinder to the King, inaugurated what is known as the ‘cottage’ form
of decoration. Though the elaborate filigree work on his books reminds
one that Le Gascon exercised an important influence, the form of the
ornaments and their arrangement remain distinctly English. A development
of this style, equally native in character, may be found a little later,
during the first part of the eighteenth century, chiefly on the Bibles
and Prayer-Books of the time. In these there is a certain amount of
rough inlay, either in the form of a panel or in that of tulips and
other conventional flowers outlined in gold, though with a dotted
instead of a solid line. These ornaments, poor in themselves, which form
the main part of the decoration, are often combined with great skill and
sense of effect. An unusual number of such books were collected at the
time of the Exhibition of Bindings at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, and
were found both charming and effective notwithstanding a somewhat rough
and hasty workmanship. From the reign of James II. to the time of Roger
Payne there are no names associated with any bindings of importance; and
with the passing of the prevailing fashion of ornament on the books just
described, design reached its lowest point towards the end of the
century. Of Roger Payne, who effected a genuine revival of bookbinding
somewhere about 1770, it is not necessary to say much. His style is well
known to all book lovers, and the details of his eccentric life have
been so often recorded that the reader must be more than weary of them.
One point in connexion with his work is, however, I think, worth
mentioning, and that is that his style has never lent itself to that
modification in imitation which enables any artist to become the founder
of a school. Any one of the skilled binders will do you a ‘Roger Payne’
as he will do you a ‘Grolier’ or a ‘Le Gascon’; but it will be a
reproduction of the real Roger’s work, with the exact details and
precise arrangement of them that are to be found on his authentic
bindings. So that, notwithstanding his originality, he inspired no
following, though his imitators have been perhaps more numerous than
those of any other binder.
[Illustration: 4. BOUND BY RIVIÈRE.]
[Illustration: 5. BOUND BY RIVIÈRE.]
Charles Lewis and Frances Bedford, followed by Robert Rivière and Joseph
Zaehnsdorf, did much good work in the early part of the last century,
especially Bedford; but they can lay no claim to an originality which
disappeared with Payne, and which was not seen again until Mr.
Cobden-Sanderson attempted to do for the binding of books what William
Morris had already done for the other decorative arts. It is the result
of this revived interest in handicrafts and the attempted application to
binding of the more vital principles of art which it is proposed to
illustrate here. One must say attempted, because success by no means
always results. In this review, however, of modern binders, definite
criticism is not an object, though the difficulties attendant on their
efforts naturally come up for consideration and necessarily involve some
expression of opinion.
[Illustration: 6. BOUND BY MORRELL.]
Both Zaehnsdorf and Rivière left representatives to carry on their work,
the former a son, and the latter two nephews, Mr. Percy and Mr. Arthur
Calkin. From the small establishments in which both houses originated
there has developed in each case an important business in which an
exceedingly large number of books are bound for the export as well as
the retail trade. In a bindery of this nature there would not be time
for the serious consideration of artistic problems unless it contained
what Mr. Lethaby so aptly describes as ‘a “quality” department in a
“quantity” business.’ It remains as true now as it has always been that
the craftsman who is also an artist must work in his own way and at his
own speed—a fact well realized in the French workshops, which are
altogether outside the rush and pressure of commercial life. So in each
of these houses we find a certain number of the more intelligent and
skilful men employed only upon the best work, and engaged in carrying
out designs which they either make up themselves from certain recognised
types or which are made for them by more practised designers. This
introduces the question—which is a practical one for the large employer,
though it need not exist for those having a comparatively limited
output—whether it produces better results to keep a trained designer, or
to give the pattern making into the hands of the more artistically
disposed ‘finishers.’ Some consider that it is impossible, so long as
the education of the workman is so lamentably defective on the side of
taste as it is, to expect him to plan book covers above the ordinary
level of presents and school prizes; others hold that his feeling for
what is good and appropriate can only be cultivated by encouraging him
to the interest and responsibility of planning what he is going to
execute. Mr. Calkin has long kept a designer entirely occupied on the
decorated work that many of his clients demand. Other houses have tried
the practice of getting drawings made by the general decorative artist,
and have given it up in disgust at the unpractical character of the
results obtained. And it is true that it takes time and patience to
train one accustomed to a free hand in invention to a realization of the
limitations necessitated by the use of rigid stamps and the
comparatively small number of them that can be employed on a binding.[1]
Ask any professed pattern maker to make you a device for a book cover,
and you will get something which, though it may be satisfactory and
attractive in itself, will be either impossible of execution or give the
most disappointing results. Naturally, where any firm happens to possess
workmen of the required taste and ability, they should be encouraged to
the utmost to give effect to their sense of drawing in its application
to their own trade. Messrs. Morrell, whose large business is entirely a
wholesale one, supplies all the booksellers with bindings designed by
his men and remarkable for their variety and merit. It is too early to
speak of the influence of the technical schools upon the output of the
large workshops, but when one knows that the three houses above
mentioned employ some 200 men between them, it can easily be imagined
that the training of the workman is a serious consideration.[2] It is
customary now for binders to keep a record of their more special work,
and in this way the extent of their range can be noted by the employer
and undue repetition prevented. Another improvement on the past is that
designs are not now multiplied as they used to be—that is to say, in the
best class of work. A specially planned cover is not repeated or even
published without the owner’s consent; and this is a wise plan, for all
art, even the best, suffers by vain repetition, and a good and
appropriate pattern on a book will be but a weariness to the eye when it
is seen in multiplicity in booksellers’ windows.
[Illustration: 7. BOUND BY MORRELL.]
[Illustration: 8. BOUND BY MORRELL.]
The concluding illustrations in this chapter show work done by Mr. Roger
de Coverly and Mr. Harry Wood. Mr. de Coverly served his apprenticeship
to the elder Zaehnsdorf, and was afterwards employed for many years by
Messrs. Leighton. In 1863 he set up for himself, and his sound taste
being discovered by Mr. F. S. Ellis and Mr. William Morris, he soon got
the custom of many of those who were then seeking its application to
bindings. In 1883 he took one of his clients, Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, as a
pupil, and has had others since. He considers his speciality to be
vellum work; but unfortunately this does not show well in reproduction.
Mr. Wood was also with Zaehnsdorf, working for him as a finisher for
twelve years. He subsequently managed and in the end bought the business
of Mr. Kaufmann in Soho, which he has greatly expanded, and which is now
managed by his son. Neither he nor de Coverly have ever sought the heavy
expenses and responsibilities of a large undertaking, but have been
content with a personal business in which they themselves have always
taken an active part.
[Illustration: 9. BOUND BY DE COVERLY.]