The English Bookbinder: Irregular Newsletter No. 2

Period Fine Bindings – Irregular Newsletter: Issue No 2. May 2006

Welcome to the second issue of my “Irregular Newsletter”

There seems to be a lot of events on just lately so I thought I would keep you informed about some of them.

Dis-bound and Dispersed: The Leaf Book Considered

This exhibition is the first to examine the history of the leaf book. A leaf book contains an original leaf from a significant printed book or manuscript that has been complemented with an essay or other explanatory material and rebound in a fine press publication. While this practice more widely distributed portions of the original, coveted book, it comes at the price of either destroying or dispersing an intact or partially fragmented publication. (I think it is sacrilege myself).

The Lilly Library is the final destination of this travelling exhibition, which opened last year at the Newberry Library in Chicago prior to its arrival at Indiana University.

The exhibition was on display at the San Francisco Public Library and the Houghton Library at Harvard.
Lilly Library Main Gallery thru 26.May.2006.

So it looks like we just missed that one then!

One we haven’t missed is the Hay-on-Wye Book Festival

For ten days from 26 May to 4 June over 50,000 visitors are expected to converge on the small market town of Hay-on-Wye, for the literary festival. There are only 39 book shops and about 10 eating places in Hay, so there may be a bit of a queue. The visitors come from the UK , Europe and America to listen to the speakers and join in the celebration of literature. We were in Hay only a few weeks ago, had a bit of lunch, a meander around, and bought a few books. The Festival is quite something, so get there early.

Did you know there are now 3 Booktowns in the UK? A ceremony took place on 12 May with the officials of Cumbria County Council and now Sedbergh can now stand comparison with Hay-on-Wye and Wigtown as our third UK Booktown.

Don’t think you’ll find much antiquarian stuff there though!!

Biggest News of all is that on July 13 Sotherby’s of London will be auctioning a copy of Shakespeare’s first folio of 1623, from what I hear, it is a remarkably good copy apart from missing one page, and has been in the same library since 1716. I’ll keep you informed on that and may tell you about the two Thomas Pavier 1619 Shakespeare Quarto’s I restored in 1986.

Bible Restoration

Last Month I showed you a large folio Bible I was about to start work on.

Click on pictures to enlarge

The book was stripped down as there was some major restoration needed to some of the leaves. Hand marbled endpapers were made and then it was re-sewn on raised cords with laced-in boards, this is called “flexible” sewing.

The book was full bound in a natural calf skin with 3 vegetable colours applied and blind tooled as a “Cambridge panelled calf” with an elaborate gilt panelled spine, 2 hand lettered red willow calf labels and the spine dated.

Here is an example of a 2 colour Bible binding!

This binding was the next job to follow, the original cover was a 19th century “For Promoting Christian Science” binding and quite restorable, but these days customers want something special to hand down, something that is going to last, just like 18th century binders did for 16th century books.

This was re-sewn on “sunken” cords with laced-in bevelled edged boards.

Old bookbinder’s never die…they only fade away!

This ancient picture of an equally ancient bookbinder shows him at his standing lay press.

But what is he actually doing?

The picture clearly shows he is not sharing any of the trade secrets as the hammer would have been used for beating out the sections and rounding and backing the spine before the book was covered, and the headcaps would not be formed in the press.

I wonder how long he had to hold that pose for?

I on the other hand am showing you exactly how much pressure is needed when nipping the endpapers on a newly bound folio Bible. It must be summertime in the Old Boy’s workshop as you can see the fire isn’t lit and he is suitably attired for the job. The standard dress for a bookbinder in those days was:

A woollen vest, shirt and tie, a thick woollen jumper, cow gown, cloth cap and big bushy moustache. Whereas: It is spring in my workshop and the standard dress has altered somewhat!

I don’t know how the Old Boy coped with the heat from tooling in those days, the 2 colour bible pictured above,took over 800 impressions of tools on the spine alone.

English Bookbinder – Collectors

It’s been a busy month with books coming in and out, the piles get higher and the waiting list longer. Some very nice books though, these 3 are for a customer who has a very fine library and is very particular about having his books uniformly bound to match each other. I suppose you could call it his ‘Signature’ as were the 17th and 18th century elaborate “Armorial Bindings”, where a man’s wealth and stature was often measured by his library.

The style is the same, even the spines are tooled to match, but I have used different tools for the inner borders.

Another client collects first edition Dickens and buys them from me, relying on my knowledge of 1st issue and 1st edition “points of issue”. She also has them uniformly bound in a style of the period much suited to her library.

Well, I now have to tackle a large folio hand coloured very sticky Atlas, whose maps have been sellotaped together, (I say sticky because it hasn’t got this sticky since “stickey” the stick insect got himself stuck on a sticky bun!), I’m sure its been done by some well meaning previous owner, not realising they are worth around £80-£100 each now! So I will leave you with a couple of “sticky” tape jobs from 20 years ago ‘bdc’ (before digital cameras).