Book-bind′ing.
The art of attaching together and covering the sheets composing a book.The earliest known forms of book binding, if the term be held to include all modes of attaching sheets together, is perhaps the Egyptian, which consisted in pasting or glueing the sheets together and rolling them upon small cylinders. The sheets were unrolled from one cylinder, and, after reading, rolled upon the other. The copy of the Pentateuch, in the possession of the small band of Samaritans yet living at Nablous, the ancient Gerizim, is thus preserved. It is claimed by its possessors to have been written by a grandson of Aaron. The book of the law in all synagogues is thus mounted.
Another ancient mode, the precursor of the more modern system, is found in the mode of stringing leaves together by several cords passing through holes near one edge. This is practiced in India with pieces of leaves neatly cut to a size. See paper; pen.
The present plan of fastening the leaves to a back and sides is believed to have been invented by Attalus, of Pergamus, or his son Eumenes, about 200 B. C. This king, or somebody for him, invented parchment, hence called pergamena, from Pergamus. It was devised as a substitute for papyrus, on which an embargo had been laid by Ptolemy of Egypt, who thus sought to embarrass the rival library in Asia Minor.
The oldest bound book known is the volume of St. Cuthbert, circa 650.
Ivory was used for book covers in the eighth century; oak in the ninth. The “Book of Evangelists,” on which the English kings took their coronation oath, was bound in oak boards, A. D. 1100.
Hog-skin and leather were used in the fifteenth century.
Calf in 1550.
Silk and velvet as early as the fifteenth century.
The Countess of Wilton, in her “Art of needlework,” says the earliest specimen of needleworkbinding remaining in the British Museum is Fichetus (Guil.) Rhetoricum, Libri tres (Impr. in Membranis), 4 to, Paris ad Sorbonae, 1471. It is covered with crimson satin, on which is wrought with the needle a coat of arms, a lion rampant in gold thread in a blue field, with a transverse badge in scarlet silk; the minor ornaments are all wrought in tine gold thread.
The next in date in the same collection is a description of the Holy Land, in French, written in Henry VII.'s time. It is bound in rich maroon velvet, with the royal arms, the garter, and motto embroidered in blue, the ground crimson, and the fleurs-de-lis, leopards, and letters of the motto in gold thread. A coronet of gold thread is inwrought with pearls; the roses at the corners are in red silk and gold. In the Bodleian Library is a volume of the Epistles of St. Paul (black letter), the binding of which is embroidered by Queen Elizabeth; around the borders are Latin sentences, etc. Archbishop Parker's “De Antiquitate Britannicae Ecclesiae” (1572), in the British Museum, is bound in green velvet, embroidered with animals and flowers, in green, crimson, lilac, and yellow silk, and gold thread.
A folio Bible which belonged to Charles I., date 1527, is now preserved in the church of Broomfield, Essex, England. It is bound in purple velvet, the arms of England embroidered in raised work on both sides.
A will of 1427 devises several psalters in velvet bindings.
Cloth binding superseded the paper known in England as “boards” in 1823.
India-rubber backs were introduced in 1841.
Tortoise-shell sides in 1856.
Three fine specimens of old bookbinding are in the collection of James S. Grinnell, of Washington, D. C., and deserve notice as being representative of different styles.
1. A manuscript breviary of the fourteenth century, elaborately illuminated on parchment, has a brown calfskin cover over sideboards of beech, the bands being of calfskin passed through holes in the boards and wedged. The cover is elaborately blindtooled, that is, not gilded, but worked by pressure and heat. The designs are in square panels of geometric figures.
The book is bound in folded signatures of five double sheets, making twenty pages to a signature, and the first letter on each of these parcels is written at the bottom of the previous parcel for the direction of the binder.
The book had brass clasps, and contains the “divine office” for the year. It is in remarkable preservation.
2. “Catalogus factorum et gestorum eorum et [332] diversis voluminibus collectus,” edited by “the most reverend father in Christ, Petro de Natalibus.” Printed in 1514.
Bound in white vellum, elaborately embossed with salient figures representing Faith, Hope, and Charity, kit-cat length in panels of the cover, surrounded by scrolls and leafage. The binding has the date of 1595, and the vellum was evidently embossed by being stamped while wet with dies engraved in intaglio. The panel borders were made by hand-tool fillets, not rolls. The figures are repeated in a manner which shows that the impressions are repetitions of the same stamp. The vellum was probably laid upon a material which would yield somewhat to pressure and then retain its form. The vellum was then dried in position.
3. A copy of John Minsheu's folio dictionary “Ductor in Linguas,” published in 1617, and dedicated to James I. It was formerly in the library of Charles I., is bound in buff leather, and has the arms and crown on both sides of the cover.
The binding of books varies, and the following names occur : —
Full-bound; back and sides leather.
Half-bound; back leather, sides paper or cloth.
Cloth; back and sides covered with a colored fabric, usually embossed.
Muslin; same as above.
Boards; an English term. The covers were of mill-board. They were afterwards covered with paper.
Other modes are known by the kind of leather with which they or their backs are full or half bound; as, Russia, morocco, roan, calf, sheep, vellum, etc.
In one form of caoutchouc binding, the sheets are folded in double leaves, clamped, treated on the back with several coats of caoutchouc in solution.
The processes of book binding are about as follows :
Folding the sheets.
Gathering the consecutive signatures.
Rolling the packs of folded sheets.
Sewing, after saw-cutting the backs for the cords.
Rounding the backs and glueing them.
Edge-cutting.
Binding; securing the book to the sides.
Covering the sides and back with leather, muslin, or paper, as the case may be.
Tooling and lettering.
Edge-gilding.
The British Museum Catalogue is a library of folios in itself. Every volume is stoutly bound in solid blue calf, with its lower edges faced with zinc, to save wear and tear from the violent shoving in of the volumes to their places.
The museum at Cassel, in Germany, has a collection illustrating European and other trees. It is in the form of a library, in which the back of each volume is furnished by the bark of some particular tree, the sides are made of perfect wood, the top of young wood, and the bottom of old. When opened, the book is found to be a box, containing either wax models or actual specimens of the flower, fruits, and leaves of the tree.
At a sale of rare books and manuscripts in Paris recently, there was disposed of a fourteenth century, illuminated, Gothic edition of the Bible, with gold clasps, set with turquoises and bound in human skin. A copy of the “Imitation of Christ,” now in the Carmelite library at Paris, is similarly covered. The human skin is said to preserve its brilliant whiteness forever, while all other parchments will turn yellow. It possesses, besides, the advantage of being easily embossed, the Bible in question being beautifully ornamented with fleurs de lys, scepters, etc. On the other hand, it absorbs ink so freely that it is impossible to write upon it. The character of the skin is determined by the microscope. The human skin and its hair are readily distinguished from those of other animals.
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