BINDINGS OLD & NEW lip THE EX-LIBRIS SERIES. EDITED BY GLEESON WHITE. BOOKBINDINGS, OLD AND NEW. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/bookbindingsoldnOOmatt_0 LIBRO LLAMADO RELOX DE PRINCIPES. SIXTEENTH CENTURY BINDING WITH THE ARMS OF FRANCIS I. Bookbindings, Old and New Notes of a Book-lover, with an Ac- count of the Grolier Club, New York, by Brander Matthews London : George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden, & New York. Mdcccxcvi THESE STRAY NOTES OF A WANDERING BOOK-LOVER ARE INSCRIBED TO THAT COMPACT BODY OF AMERICAN BIBLIOPHILES THE GROLIER CLUB CONTENTS. BOOKBINDINGS OF THE PAST. CHAP. PAGE I. Grolier and the Renascence ....... 5 II. De Thou and u Le Gascon" 47 III. Padeloup and Derome 68 BOOKBINDINGS OF THE PRESENT. I. The Technic of the Craft 95 II. The Binders of To-day 119 III. The Outlook for the Future 151 COMMERCIAL BOOKBINDING. I. The Antiquity of Edition Binding . . . . . 171 II. The Merits of Machine Binding . . , . . . 182 III. The Search for Novelty 209 IV. Stamped Leather „ . 216 BOOKS IN PAPER-COVERS. I. The Summer Clothes of Fiction 233 II. The Influence of the Pictorial Poster . . . 246 III. British and American Paper-covers 264 vii viii Contents. THE GROLIER CLUB OF NEW YORK. CHAP. PAGE I. New York and its Clubs 291 II. Grolier himself 296 III. The Aims of the Club . . . 302 IV. The Publications of the Grolier Club .... 314 INDEX 337 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FULL-PAGE PLATES. PAGE Libro Llamado Relox de Principes. Binding of the i 6th Century with Arms of Francis I. . Frontispiece Grolier Binding, " Heliodori " 7 Grolier Binding, " Bessarioni " 11 Grolier Binding, "II Cortegiano" 15 "Benedetti's Anatomy," 1537 19 " Colloquies of Erasmus," Basel, 1537 23 "Erizzo, Discorso Sopra le Modaglie Antiche," Venice, 1559 27 Binding executed for Tho. Maioli, 1536 . . . . . 31 Italian, i6th Century 35 Binding executed by Clovis Eve for Louis XIII. . . 39 a Pandectarum Juris Florentine" Binding with the Arms of France and the Cipher of Henry II. and Diana of Poitiers 41 "Valerii Maximi Dictorum." Bound by Nicolas Eve 45 Binding of the i6th Century 49 Binding executed by Nicolas Eve, 1578 51 French, i6th Century. Attributed to Clovis Eve . 55 "Arianus, de Venatione," Paris, 1644. Bound by Eve 59 French, 17TH Century. Attributed to "Le Gascon" 63 ix x List of Illustrations. PAGE "Office de la Semaine Sainte." Bound by Padeloup 73 "Ariosto, Orlando Furioso," Venice, 1584. Binding of Derome the Younger 77 French, i8th Century. By Derome 81 English, i8th Century. Roger Payne 91 "History, Theory, and Practice of Illuminating. " By Digby Wyatt. Bound by Zaehnsdorf ... 99 "aucassin and nlcolete." bound by ruban .... 109 Inside Cover of Preceding 113 A Binding by Francisque Cuzin 123 "In Memoriam." Bound by Cobden-Sanderson ... 133 A Binding by Cobden-Sanderson 139 New Testament. Bound by William Matthews . . 141 Irving's "Knickerbocker's History of New York." Bound by William Matthews 145 Inside Cover of Preceding 149 "Pride and Prejudice. " Designed by Hugh Thomson 185 "Selections from Robert Herrick." Designed by E. A. Abbey 195 "Goblin Market. 1 ' Designed by L. Housman ... 197 "rubaiyat of omar khayyam." designed by e. vedder 201 "Half Hours with an Old Golfer" 205 "A Book of the Tile Club." Designed by Stanford White 213 "Century Dictionary." Designed by Stanford White 217 "Merry Adventures of Robin Hood." Designed by Howard Pyle 221 "The Quiet Life." Designed by Stanford White . . 225 List of Illustrations. xi PAGE " The Oregon Trail. 1 ' Designed by J. A. Schweinfurth 229 Facsimile of the Cover to Dickens 1 " Mystery of Edwin Drood 11 235 " Little Dinner. 11 Designed by M. N. Armstrong . . 243 "CONTES POUR LES BIBLIOPHILES." DESIGNED BY M. AURIOL 253 "L'Enfant Prodigue. 11 Designed by Willette . . . 257 "Le Reve." Designed by Carloz Schwabe .... 261 "Baby's Opera. 11 Designed by Walter Crane . . . 273 "Foes in Ambush. 11 Designed by R. L. M. Camden . . 275 " John Gilpin. 11 Designed by Randolph Caldecott . 279 Spenser's "Faerie Queene." Designed by Walter Crane 281 "Under the Window. 11 Designed by Kate Greena way 285 Grolier Club Book Plate 299 Grolier Club Building 303 Reduced Facsimile of Title-page of Grolier Club Edition of " A Decree of Starre-Chamber, con- cerning Printing" 315 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT. Aldine Tools 29 A "Powder" with the Device of the Dauphin ... 37 Curved Gouges 43 Tools used in the " Fanfares "... 54 Little Branches . . . 54 Tools of " Le Gascon " 65 Three 17TH Century Borders 69 xii List of Illustrations. PAGE A Derome Border . . . 85 Eighteenth Century Tools 86, 87 A Binding by Cobden-Sanderson 105 "The Story of Sigurd. " Bound by Cobden-Sanderson 127 "Atalanta in Calydon." Bound by Cobden-Sanderson 128 "Homeri Ilias." Bound by Cobden-Sanderson . . . 130 Shelley's "Revolt of Islam." Bound by Cobden-San- derson 131 "Life and Death of Jason." Bound by Cobden-San- derson . . 136 "Les Chatiments." Bound by Petit 155 "Art Out-of-Doors " 173 "An Island Garden" 174 "Many Inventions" 188 "Evening Tales" 189 "Greek Vase Paintings" 190 "The Chatelaine of La Trinite" 193 "The Ballad of Beau Brocade" 194 Panel from Back and Cover of "Old Italian Masters" 207 "A Girl's Life 80 Years Ago" 211 "Thumb-nail Sketches" 220 "Proofs from Scribner's Monthly." Designed by F. Lathrop 239 "Selected Proofs." Designed by Stanford White . 240 " Bric-a-Brac." Designed by Caran d'Ache .... 260 "Le Petit Chien." Designed by Louis Morin . . . 263 "The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine." De- signed by Elihu Vedder 264 List of Illustrations. xiii PAGE "The Century." Designed by Stanford White . . 265 "English Illustrated Magazine. 1 ' Designed by Wal- ter Crane 266 "Harper's Monthly" (English) 267 "Harper's Monthly" (American) 268 "Bookbuyer." Designed by Will H. Low 269 Harvard Graduates' Magazine 270 "Petite Poucette." Designed by Boutet de Monvel 284 The Grolier Arms 295 Grolier Club Card Invitation 306 Head-piece from Grolier Club Edition of "Knicker- bocker's 6 History of New York.'" Drawn by W. H. Drake 318 Another drawn by Howard Pyle . . 319 Noah's Log-book — Head-piece from Grolier Club Edition of "Knickerbocker's 'History of New York.'" Drawn by W. H. Drake 320 Reduced Facsimile of Title-page of "Philobiblon" . 326 Reduced Facsimile of Last Page of "Philobiblon" . 327 BOOKBINDINGS OF THE PAST BOOKBINDINGS OF THE PAST i^^S^i'S I begin to set down here these rambling impressions and stray sug- gestions about the great bookbind- ers of the past, I am reminded of a pleasant saying recorded in Burton's " Book- Hunter," that storehouse of merry jests against those who love books not wisely but too well. Burton tells us that in the hearing of a certain dealer in old tomes and rare volumes a remark was ventured that such an one was " said to know something about books," which brought forth the fatal answer: "He know about books? Nothing — nothing at all, I assure you; unless, perhaps, about their insides." The pertinence of this retort to myself, just now, I cannot but confess at once. What I know best about books is their insides. And yet, perhaps, it is not an unpardonable sin for an 3 4 Bookbindings Old and New. author to concern himself also with the outside of books — if so be he love them, if he care for tall copies, if he be capable of cherishing the good edition, the one with the misprint. This is why I am emboldened to risk myself in a voyage of retrospection in search of the mas- ters and the masterpieces of the bibliopegic art. I. GROLIER AND THE RENASCENCE. In a letter written to a friend in April, 15 18, Erasmus highly praised the civility, the modesty, the integrity, and the munificence of his corre- spondent, and added, " You owe nothing to books, but in the future books will give you an eternal glory." The man to whom this was written was a Viscount of Aguisy, for a while treasurer of the army of Italy, then French ambassador to Rome, and afterward treasurer of France under Francis I., Henry II., Francis II., and Charles IX. "Born in 1479, dying in 1565, he lived eighty- six years," — so M. Le Roux de Lincy, his biographer, tells us, — " during which he showed himself always a zealous protector of the learned, a lover of the good and beautiful books issued by the Giunti and the Aldi, or by the other pub- lishers of the time, and also an ardent collector of 5 6 Bookbindings Old and New. coins and of antiquities." Yet the prediction of Erasmus has so far come true that the name of the ambassador and treasurer of France would be forgotten were it not that the fame of the book-lover has lingered, and spread, until now, more than three centuries after the death of Jean Grolier of Lyons, there is a flourish- ing club called by his name here in New York, the chief city of a continent undiscovered when he was born. Grolier had the good fortune to live through the glorious years of the Renascence, when all the arts were reviving at once and flourishing together; and he had the good judgment to aid in the development of the art of book- binding to which he attached his name insep- arably. The art was not new when he began to collect the best works of the best printers, but it was about to have a new birth ; and when it was born again, he helped to guide its steps. Perhaps the first bookbinder was the hum- ble workman who collected the baked clay tiles on which the Assyrians wrote their laws ; and he was a bookbinder also who prepared a Bookbindings Old and New. 9 protecting cylinder to guard the scrolls of papy- rus on which Vergil, and Horace, and Martial had written their verses. Before the invention of printing, the choicer manuscripts, books of hours, and missals, were made even more valuable by sides of carved ivory, or of delicately wrought silver often studded with gems. Even after printing was invented, the binder was called upon only to stitch the leaves of the book, all further deco- ration being the privilege of the silversmith. Benvenuto Cellini was paid six thousand crowns for the golden cover, carved and enriched with precious stones, which he made for a book that Cardinal de' Medici wished to give Charles V. In France the silversmiths claimed the monop- oly of binding, and also of dealing in the finer stuffs — not merely in cloth-of-gold, but even in velvet. Certain of the books bound in the monasteries were incased in boards — veritable boards, of actual wood — so thick that now and again they were hollowed out to hold a crucifix or a pair of spectacles, although sometimes it was io Bookbindings Old and New. only to make room for an almanac. It is no wonder that when a tome thus ponderously begirt fell upon Petrarch it so bruised his leg that for a while there was danger of amputa- tion. Even when these real boards were thin, they were thick enough to conceal a worm, that worst of all the enemies of books ; and thus real boards, like the German condottieri in many an Italian city, destroyed what they were meant to protect. In time the genuine board was given up for a pasteboard, which was then made by pasting together sheets of paper ; and myriads of pages of books no longer in fashion were thus destroyed to stiffen the covers of newer volumes. In our day many interesting fragments of forgotten authors, and not a few curious and instructive engravings, have been rescued from oblivion, when the decay of old book-covers has led to the picking apart of the pasteboards beneath the crumbling leather. With the invention of printing, and the immediate multiplication of books, there came an urgent demand for workmen capable of Bookbindings Old and New. 13 covering a volume in seemly fashion. In many a monastery the binderies must have been in- creased hastily to meet the demand ; and we can trace the handiwork of these monastic craftsmen by the designs they imprinted on the covers of the books they bound — designs made up mainly of motives from the manu- script missals, from the typographic ornaments of the early printers, and from the transcripts of those carvings in wood and stone with which the churches of that time were abundantly enriched. But the workshops in the monasteries did not suffice, and leather- workers of all sorts — saddlers, harness-makers, and those who put together the elaborate boots and shoes of the times — were impressed into the service, taking over to the new trade of bookbinding, not only their skill in dealing with leather, but also the tools and the designs with which they had been wont to decorate the boots, the saddles, the harness, and the caskets of fair ladies and lords of high degree. For the most part these were humble artisans, lacking even in the rudi- 14 Bookbindings Old and New. ments of learning. The authorities in France preferred the workman to be ignorant who was called in to bind the records of the State and the royal books of account. The late Edouard Fournier, in his essay on the " Art de la Reliure en France," cites the contract of one Guillaume Ogier in Italy, 1492, as a binder of the registers of the treasury, in which the artisan " declared and made oath that he knew not how to read nor to write." Perhaps one reason for the superiority of the early Italian bindings over the French of the same period was that the workmen employed in Italy were more intelligent and better educated. In a book printed by Aldus in 15 1 3, the notice to the binder is in Greek! Ambroise Firmin-Didot explained the anomaly of this apparently extraordinary culture on the part of the handicraftsmen of that era by sug- gesting that the workmen employed by Aldus — who was binder as well as printer — were many of them Greeks who had been driven to Venice after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. Every reader of " Romola " will Bookbindings Old and New. 1 7 remember the influence exercised on the Italian renascence by the personal presence of the Greeks ; and in no art was this influence more immediate, more permanent, or more beneficial, than in the art of bookbinding. We know that Grolier was in Italy in 15 12, and that he was still at Milan in 1525. He was a friend and a patron of Aldus. " No book left the Aldine press,'' M. Le Roux de Lincy declares, " without several copies, some on vellum, ,, some on white or coloured paper, being specially printed for the library of the French collector. Voltaire says that " a reader acts toward books as a citizen toward men ; he does not live with all his contemporaries, he chooses a few friends." Grolier chose for his friends the best books and the most beauti- ful ; he was fond of a good author no less than of a wide margin. As Dr. Holmes tells us, a library " is a looking-glass in which the owner's mind is reflected and it is a noble portrait of the man which we get when we look at the books of Jean Grolier. He was a lover of the New Learning. His praises are repeated c 1 8 Bookbindings Old and New, in many a dedication from the scholars and the publisher-printers of the period. Many a book was brought out wholly, or partly, at his expense. The managers of the Aldine press often borrowed money from him, and never applied in vain. He quarrelled once with Ben- venuto Cellini,, but he was a close friend of Geoffroy Tory. He was a scholar, as is at- tested by the elegant Latinity of his extant correspondence. He was an artist of not a little skill with the pencil, as a sketch in his copy of the " Maxims " of Erasmus proves. Fournier thought that perhaps Grolier him- self designed the graceful arabesques and inter- woven bands which characterize the covers of his books. " Compared with the other bindings of the same time, and of the same country, those of Grolier are distinguished by an un- equalled and unfailing taste." They are closely akin to the bindings executed for Aldus in Venice, and to the bindings then made by the Italian workmen elsewhere in Italy, in France, and even in England : but they are somehow superior ; they have a note of their Bookbindings Old and New. 2 1 own; they are the result of a finer artistic sense ; and the longer I study the books bound during the Italian renascence, the more I am inclined to agree with Fournier when he asserts that Grolier, " with Italian methods, created a French art." Certainly he gave to his library so definite an individuality that the volumes which composed it three hundred years ago are now treated as veritable works of art ; they have their catalogue, like the pictures of a great painter, or the plates of a great en- graver; they are numbered. Every existing book bound for Grolier has its pedigree, and is traced lovingly from catalogue to catalogue of the great collectors. The beauty of the Grolier bindings is in the lavish and tasteful ornamentation of the sides. In the early days of printing, and when the traditions of the days of manuscripts still were dominant, the shelves of a library inclined like a reading-desk, and the handsome volumes lay on their sides, taking their ease. Books then were not packed together on level shelves as they are now, shoulder to shoulder, like 22 Bookbindings Old and New. common soldiers ; but each stately tome stood forward by itself singly, like an officer. So the broad sides of the ample folios seemed to invite decoration. The first books which Grolier had bound in Italy are similar in their style of decoration to those then sent forth from the Aldine press ; a few have elegant arabesques, setting off a central shield, but most of them have simple geometrical designs in which interlacing bands, formed by parallel lines gilt-tooled, are relieved by solid ornaments very like those with which the Aldus family then adorned the pages of the books they were printing, and which were suggested some, no doubt, by the illuminations of the old missals, but more, beyond question, by the Oriental traditions of the Greek work- men. The distinguishing quality of these or- naments, familiar enough to all who know the Aldine style, was grace united to boldness. Look at a specimen of the earlier of Grolier's bindings. Note the simplicity of the interlaced bands, the sharp strength of the enriching arabesques, the skill with which they are com- "COLLOQUIES OF ERASMUS," BASEL, 1537. QUARTO, 7x4! INCHES; BROWN CALF. (FROM BLENHEIM COLLECTION. OWNED BY MR. BRAYTON IVES.) 23 Bookbiitdings Old and New. 25 bined ; and then remember that this, like every other design, was laboriously tooled bit by bit, and line by line, each separate ornament being stamped on the cover at least twice, once to impress the leather, and again to attach the gold. It is only some understanding of the technic of an art which enables us to appreciate its triumphs. The art of the bookbinder is lim- ited by the " tools " he uses. A " tool," in the parlance of the trade, is the brass implement at the end of which is cut the little device, ornament, or part of an ornament, that is sep- arately to be transferred to the leather. Every figure, every leaf, every branch, every part of the design, is made of one or more tools. The binder conceives his general scheme of decoration, knowing his tools ; and it is by a combination and repetition of these tools that he forms his design. One might almost say that tools are style ; certainly it is obvious that the tools changed form concurrently with every modification of taste in bookbinding ; and a study of the tools, as they have been modified 26 Bookbindings Old and New. during the past three centuries, is essential to any real understanding of the art of book- binding. Thus we see that when Grolier began to gather his library, the binder used tools copied from Aldine typographic devices, and impressed in gold on the cover of a book that figure which on the printed page was a solid black. But the finer taste of the Renascence soon discov- ered that, although the broad black of the Aldine devices was pleasing on a white page, an excess of solid gold was less satisfactory on the side of a book. So they made these tools sometimes hollowed, — that is, in outline merely, which lightened them instantly, — and some- times azured — that is, crossed by horizontal lines, as in the manner of indicating " azure " in heraldry. Then, having the same device in three different values where before they had but one, the adroit binder was able to vary and combine them as he needed solid strength or easy lightness. The next step was to increase the variety and the complication of the interlacing bands " ERIZZO, DISCORSO SOPRA LE MODAGLIE ANTICHE," VENICE, 1559. IN 8VO (IMPRIMES EXPOSITION, NO. 526. PLAT RECTO). BOUND FOR GROLIER IN THE STYLE OF THOSE OF GEOFFROY TORY. It is the only example known of work of this class bearing trie name of Grolier. The device is on the verso. (From " Les Reliures d'Art a la Biblio- theque Nationale." By permission of Edouard Rouveyre.) 27 Bookbindings Old and New. 29 — and it is these interlacing bands which are • perhaps the chief characteristic of the Grolier bindings. Instead of being indicated by two fine lines of gold, the bands were marked out by three lines. Finally, the bands traced by plain gold tooling were enriched by paint. Adroitly contrasted colours were chosen to fill ALDINE TOOLS, HOLLOW. ALDINE TOOLS, AZURED. up the hollow bands which twisted above and below one another all over the cover of the book. To-day these painted ribbons and the gilding of the design are sadly dulled by the years; but when they were fresh, nothing could have been more magnificently resplendent than this polychromatic decoration. 30 Bookbindings Old and New. On one or the other side of Grolier's books was the legend " Io. Grolierii et amicorum," a form which M. Le Roux de Lincy thinks he may have borrowed from his friend Maioli, an Italian collector, of whom almost nothing is known, although his books are greatly sought after — Grolier had several of them. M. Cle- ment de Ris, the author of a pleasant volume on the " Amateurs d'Autrefois," doubts whether Grolier ever lent his books, despite this altru- istic declaration. But M. Le Roux de Lincy has been able to trace not a few duplicates and triplicates from Grolier s collection, — he has even found five copies of the same Aldine edition of Vergil, — whence it is fair to con- clude that the book-lover meant the legend to be interpreted in the most liberal manner, in that he stood ready to give his books to his friends, even though he was not willing to lend them. Indeed, to lend a beloved volume is the last thing a true bibliophile can be coaxed to do, although the lending of books was a form of charity specially recommended by a Council of Paris so far back as 12 12. We know that BINDING EXECUTED FOR THO. MAIOLI, 1536. (FROM " MANUEL HIS- TORIQUE ET BIBLIOGRAPHIQUE DE L'AMATEUR DE RELIURE." BY PER- MISSION OF LEON GRUEL.) 31 Bookbindings Old and New. 33 Grolier gave four of the best of his books to the father of J. A. de Thou. The books bound for Maioli are almost as beautiful as the books bound for Grolier, but, as M. Marius-Michel remarks, Maioli had some poor bindings, and Grolier had none. Perhaps it was also due to the example of Maioli that Grolier chose a motto, which ran, " Portio mea, Domine, sit in terra viventium," modified from Psalm cxli. Maioli's was, " Ini- mici mea michi, non me michi." Marc Laurin of Watervliet, a friend of Grolier and of Maioli, and a book-lover like them, had for his motto " Virtus in arduo." In as marked a contrast as may be with the friendly legend on Gro- lier's books is the motto which the learned Scaliger borrowed from the Vulgate, " Ite ad vendentes " — " Go ye rather to them that sell " (Matthew xxv. 9). Prefixed to the " Catalogue of an Exhibi- tion of Recent Bookbindings, 1 860-1 890," held at the Grolier Club in New York in Decem- ber, 1890, was a note on styles, in which there D 34 Bookbindings Old and New. was a division of the best known work of the Renascence into three classes, rather arbitra- rily designated as " Aldine or Italian," " Maioli," and " Grolier." The Aldine was said to have ornaments of solid face without any shading whatever, and these ornaments were of Arabic origin, and such as were used by Aldus and the other early Italian printers ; the Maioli was said to be composed generally " of a frame- work of shields or medallions, with a design of scrollwork flowing through it " ; and the Grolier was said to be " an interlaced framework of geo- metrical figures, circles, squares, and diamonds, with scrollwork running through it, the orna- ments of which are of Moresque character, and often azured." Of course, a classification of this sort is lacking in scientific precision, since all three of these styles existed at the same time, and are to be found on books bound for Grolier, although there is no doubt that he most often affected the interlacing geometrical patterns. That three styles different enough to bear dis- tinct names should flourish side by side is evi- ITALIAN, I6TH CENTURY. 35 Bookbindings Old and New. 37 dence, were any needed, of the extraordinary artistic richness of the Italian renascence. Nor is this the whole story. While Grolier and his fellow-collectors were developing a French art in Italy, and with Italian workmen, the art was taking root in France, and flourishing lustily. Born in the reign of Louis XII., Grolier died in the reign of Charles IX., and he was a witness of the sturdy development of art in France under Francis I. and Henry II. While he was having books bound in one or another of the three con- temporary styles of Italian origin, two styles were in process of evolution in France, without his assistance, and perhaps without his approval. Certainly there is now extant no volume known to have belonged to Gro- lier decorated either with a seme (as the French A "POWDER" WITH THE DEVICE call it), a " powder," fre- of the dauphin. quently used by Francis L, or with the elaborately enriched central rectangle, surrounded by a frame 4? & 4? 38 Bookbindings Old and New. of rolling arabesques, such as we find Henry II. to have been fond of. In the " powder " there is, perhaps, a lightly tooled fillet around the side of the book, and perhaps a coat of arms, or some other vignette, in the centre, and even at each corner, but the binding derives its decorative richness from the sowing broadcast of the kings initial, or of the royal lily, or of some other single tool, repeated regularly in horizontal and perpendic- ular lines. Sometimes it contains but one device thus repeated geometrically, and sometimes two or three devices are alternated, and agreeably contrasted. In the hands of a feeble binder the " powder " degenerates easily into stiff and barren monotony; but when the devices are adroitly varied, and made to sustain each other skil- fully, it is capable of indisputable dignity and strength. A kindred artful employment of monogram and personal emblem it is which gives distinc- tion to the beautiful bindings which bear the double H of Henry II., and the triple crescent of Diana of Poitiers. The famous Henri Deux ,.->' ^ r-\>-\ K*TV rr* 1.. ^ ■ * >. * /» i 1 i ' j 0 MJ*R i > V/> <^ "->*> \V "**> j 1 yyvy y y y y y y x *R "»v " HOMERI ILIAS." Size, 5% in. X 3% in. Bound by Cobden-Sanderson. land. He is a friend and fellow-labourer of Mr. William Morris and of Mr. Walter Crane with whose socialistic propaganda he is in sympa- Bookbindings Old and New. 131 thy, and with whom he manifests and parades. He takes much the same view of life that they SHELLEY.- "THE REVOLT OF ISLAM." Size, SV 2 in. X 5V4 in. Bound by Cobden-Sanderson. have ; he holds the same creed as to society, and as to each man's duty toward it ; he has the 132 Bookbindings Old and New. same aim in art ; and he is gifted with not a little of the same decorative instinct. Believ- ing in handicraft as the salvation of humanity, and that a man should labour with his hands, he abandoned the bar, and studied the trade of the binder. Perhaps it is hardly unfair to call him an amateur — so Mr. Hunt was an ama- teur when he designed those most beautiful wrought-iron gates at Newport. Mr. Cobden- Sanderson's forwarding has not yet attained to the highest professional standard. But there are not lacking book-lovers who believe him to be the most original and the most effective finisher who has yet appeared in England. His tooling is admirably firm and dazzlingly vigorous. Whatever the inadequacy of his workmanship in the processes which precede the gilding, —and in these his hand is steadily gaining strength, — there is no disputing his decorative endowment. He brought to the study of bookbinding an alert intelligence, a trained mind, and a determination to master the secrets of the art. He does all his own work, being both forwarder and finisher, un- Bookbindings Old and New. 135 aided even by an apprentice, although his wife (a daughter of Richard Cobden) has taken charge of the sewing. He designs his own tools, having them cut especially for him. Even the letters he uses were drawn for him by Miss May Morris ; and he makes a most artful use of lettering, — working initials, names, titles, and mottos into his design, and making them an integral and essential part of the scheme of decoration. He has studied most lovingly the methods of " Le Gascon," and he has assimilated some of the taste of that master of the art ; it is from " Le Gascon," no doubt, that Mr. Cobden-Sanderson caught the knack of powdering parts of his design with gold points, stars, single leaves, and the like — a device giving the utmost brilliancy to the design if used skilfully. Mr. Cobden-Sanderson will not work to order. He binds only those books that please him, and he binds them as he pleases. He is independent of the caprices of his cus- tomers. He does not undertake many vol- umes, and with each he does his best. 136 Bookbindings Old and New. When a novice, trying his prentice hand, he wasted himself more than once on volumes "THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JASON." Bound by Cobden-Sanderson. of no great value, and put a fifty dollar binding on a book not worth five — a pe- cuniary solecism, an artistic incongruity. Of Bookbindings Old and New. 137 late he has not fallen into this blunder, and he prefers to spend himself on books of permanent value in the original edition. Of course he never repeats himself ; every one of his bindings is as unique as a picture ; there are no replicas. Every cover is com- posed for the volume itself, and is often the outcome of a loving study of the author, a decorative scheme having been suggested by some representative passage. But he never confounds decoration with illustration ; as he explained in an article on his art, " beauty is the aim of decoration, and not illustration, or the expression of ideas." So we do not find on his books any of the childish symbolism which has been abundantly advocated in England, and according to which a treatise on zoology or botany must be adorned with an animal or a flower — a bald and babyish labelling of a book wholly unrelated to propriety of orna- mentation. Mr. Cobden-Sanderson's covers are generally rich with conventionalized flowers arrayed with geometrical precision. He falls 138 Bookbindings Old and New. into a naturalistic treatment only at rare and regrettable moments. In a copy of Mr. Mor- ris's " Hopes and Fears for Art," which Mr. Cobden-Sanderson has bound, the design has a careful freedom of composition and an artful symmetry ; the treatment of the rose-branches which form the border is almost purely con- ventional, and the broad blank space in the centre is restfully open. In America the art of the binder is retarded by reasons really outside of art — by the high wages of skilled workmen, and by the high tariff on raw materials, which have so raised the cost of the best bookbinding that many book-lovers in New York have been wont to send their precious tomes on a long voyage across the Atlantic, to be bound in London or Paris. Americans were among the best customers of Francis Bedford, and the cata- logue of the Grolier Club exhibition proves that they have been persistent purchasers of the best work of contemporary French binders. But to send books abroad to be bound is no way to encourage the development of the A BINDING BY CQBDEN-SANDERSON. 139 Bookbindings Old and New. 143 art at home. This same Grolier Club exhibi- tion showed that American craftsmen were cap- able of turning out work of a very high rank. The best of the books bound by Mr. William Matthews, by Mr. Alfred Matthews, by Brad- streets, by Mr. Smith, and by Mr. Stikeman, held their own fairly well. Considering the dif- ficulties under which the art has developed in this country, the showing made by the Amer- ican binders was the most creditable. For a binding like Mr. William Matthew's " Knickerbocker's History of New York," there is no need to make any apology ; it is excellent in conception and in execution, pure in style, modestly original, and most harmoniously decora- tive, with its appropriate ship, its tiny tulips, and its wreaths of willow. The inventor of these designs for the inside and the outside of the Knickerbocker was Mr. Louis J. Rhead, whom Mr. Matthews had called to his aid. Although both Mr. Matthews and Mr. Rhead are Englishmen by birth, I think I can feel an American influence in the decoration of this American book, If I am right, this is evi- 144 Bookbindings Old and New. dence, were any needed, of the great advantage there is in having a book bound by a coun- tryman of the author, who will treat it with unconscious propriety of decoration. I know a wise collector in New York who makes it a rule to have his French books bound in Paris, his English books bound in London, and his American books bound here in New York. " Fifty years ago," said Mr. William Matthews in his interesting address on his art, " there was not a finely bound book, except what by chance had been procured abroad, to be found in any collection in America. Fine binding was an unknown art." Now in the last de- cade of the nineteenth century, Mr. Matthews thinks " there are many examples of American workmanship in our collections that would do honour to the best French and English binders of the last half-century." If this is true, much of the credit for the improvement of public taste is due to the influence of Mr. Matthews himself. Of modern Italian and German binding there is no necessity or space to say anything here. IRVING'S " KNICKERBOCKER'S HISTORY OF NEW YORK.' Bound by William Matthews. Published by the Grolier Club, 1888. Owned by Mr. William Matthews, 145 Bookbindings Old and New. 147 The tradition of vellum binding has been kept alive in Rome and in Florence, where the bevel- edged white tomes are often relieved by an inlaid rectangle of coloured calf, tooled with what might perhaps be called fairly enough a Neo-Aldine pattern. The exhibition of the Grolier Club, which has aided in the preparation and in the illustration of these pages, included no Italian work, — and this is evidence that our collec- tors, rightly or wrongly, do not hold it in high esteem. Nor was there a single specimen of Teutonic handiwork. Yet Trautz was a German by birth, and earlier in this century there were several German binders established in England — Walther, Kalthoeber, Staggemeier. Even now, while one of the leading binders of Lon- don, Mr. Riviere, is of French descent, another, Mr. Zaehnsdorf, is of German. In New York many of the journeyman bookbinders are Ger- mans. Not only was the bibliopegic art of Germany unrepresented at this recent exhi- bition in New York, but in none of the many recent books about binding, French, English, 148 Bookbindings Old and New. and American, do I find any attention paid to the work of the modern Germans. Several years ago M. Rouveyre of Paris, who had published half a dozen books about binding, arranged for a French edition of a collection of German bindings ; and of " La Dorure sur Cuir (Reliure, Ciselure, Gaufrure) en Allemagne." Fifty copies were issued, the same publisher hav- ing risked fifteen hundred copies of M. Octave Uzanne's " La Reliure Moderne." From the well-made reproductions in this volume, it is fair to infer that the German binding of to-day is not remarkably interesting. It is sometimes dull and sometimes pretentious; it is frequently designed by architects who are without training in the needs and possibilities of its technic ; it is often violently polychromatic ; and it is sometimes set off by elaborate panels of inserted enamel, and by richly chiselled corners and centrepieces of silver. What is best is the artful employ- ment of vigorous blind-tooling; and what is most noteworthy is the successful revival of the mediaeval art of carving in leather, always best understood by the Germans. III. THE OUTLOOK FOR THE FUTURE. Much as one might expect a precious metal to enrich a tome, there is more than a hint of Teutonic heaviness in most of these carved- leather covers, girt with solid silver clasps, and armed with chased medallions. The occasional attempts of American silversmiths at book-dec- oration are lighter and more graceful. I have seen more than one prayer-book, the smooth dark calfskin of which was shielded by a thin shell of silver pierced with delicate arabesques. But this is almost an accidental return to a method of ornamentation long past its useful- ness, and appropriate only when every book was a portly tome bound in real boards, and repos- ing in solitary glory on its own lectern. The future of bookbinding does not lie in any alli- ance with silversmithery. Just where the future of bookbinding does 151 1 52 Bookbindings Old and New. lie is very difficult to declare. Cosmopolitan commonplace is the characteristic of much of the work of to-day. Craftsmen of remarkable technical skill are content with convention- ality and they go on indefinitely repeating the old styles, — - Mai'oli and Grolier, Padeloup and Derome, — styles which were once alive, but which have long since been void of any germ of vitality. To persist in using them is like refusing to speak any language but Latin. For a man alive to-day a living dialect, how- ever impure, is better than a lifeless language, however perfect. There are not wanting signs of a reaction against the banality of modern bookbinding. One of them is the instant success of Mr. Cobden-Sanderson's innovations. Another is the return to silver-mounting. Yet a third, curious only, and infertile, is the decoration of a book-cover with enamels, either incrusted or applied. The Germans have taken to letting a monogram, ornamented or metal, into the centre of a book-cover; but nothing seems to be gained by this which a mosaic of leather Bookbindings Old and New. 153 would not have given. The late Philippe Burty, the distinguished French art-critic, and a book-lover with the keenest liking for nov- elty, had a copy on Dutch paper of Poulet- Malassis's essay on " Ex-Libris " ; he enriched it with other interesting book-plates; he in- serted a few autograph letters ; he had it bound by R. Petit in full morocco, with his mono- gram at the corners ; and in the centre of the side he let in a metal plate on which his own book-plate was enamelled in niello. This singu- larly personal binding is reproduced in M. Oc- tave Uzanne's volume on " La Reliure Moderne," where we find another of M. Burty's experi- ments, a copy of M. Claudius Popelin's " De la Statue et de la Peinture " (translated from Alberti), also bound by Petit, and also identi- fied by the owner's monogram, and having, moreover, in the centre of the side, an enam- elled panel made by M. Popelin himself for his friend's copy of his own book. Burty had in his collections other volumes dis- tinguished by enamels ; and there were in the Grolier Club exhibition a set of books belonging 154 Bookbindings Old and New. to Mr. S. P. Avery, and quite as much out of the common as Burty's. Mr. Avery has sent certain volumes of the " Bibliotheque de l'En- seignement des Beaux-arts " to the authors, asking each to indicate the binding which he thought most consonant with his work; so Mr. Avery has « La Faience," of M. Theodore Deck, decorated with panels of pottery, one of them being a portrait of the author executed at his own ceramic works; and he has Sauzy's " Marvels of Glass-Making," with covers con- taining glass panels enamelled in colours. These ventures belong among the curiosities of the art ; they are to be classed among the freaks rather than with the professional beauties. Another book of Burty's (now owned by Mr. Avery) has an exceptional interest — an interest perhaps rather literary than rigidly artistic. It is a copy of the original edition of Victor Hugo's scorching satire, " Napoleon le Petit/' published in 1853, a few months after Napoleon had broken his oath and made himself emperor; this copy (made doubly pre- Bookbindings Old and New. 155 cious by three lines in the poet's handwriting) was bound in dark green morocco, and the side was hollowed out to receive an embroid- " LES CHATIMENTS." VICTOR HUGO, 1853. Bound by Petit. Green morocco. The " Bee " from the throne of Napo- leon III., Tuileries, September, 1870. Owned by Mr. Samuel P. Avery. ered bee — a bee which had been cut from the throne of Napoleon III. in the Tuileries a few days after the battle of Sedan. This is the very irony of bookbinding. A copy of 156 Bookbindings Old and New. " Les Chatiments " was bound to match. Future collectors will find these bees of Burty even harder to acquire than those which mark the books of De Thou. Unusual, not to say unique, as such an opportunity must be, there is here a hint for the book-lover not by him to be despised. Here at least is an exceptional binding. Here at least we leave the monotonous iteration of the cut-and-dried. Here is a method of estab- lishing a relation between the subject of the book and its exterior not hitherto attempted. For nine books out of ten the conventional binding suffices, Jansenist crushed levant for the costly volumes, simple half morocco for those less valuable. But for the special treas- ures, for the books with an individuality of their own, why may we not abandon this bar- ren impersonality and seek to get out of the regular rut? M. Octave Uzanne has avowed that he would prefer to have a copy of the " Legende des Siecles" clad soberly in a fragment of the dark-green uniform which Hugo wore the day he Bookbindings Old and New. 157 was received into the French Academy, to the same volume bound with the utmost luxury by the best binder of the time. Perhaps it is carrying this fancy a little too far to bind the Last Dying Speech and Confession of a mur- derer in a strip of his own hide properly tanned, or even to cover Holbein's " Dance of Death " with a like ghastly integument ; but I confess I should find a particular pleasure in owning the copy of Washington Irving's " Conquest of Grenada," which Mr. Roger de Coverly bound " in Spanish morocco from Valencia " for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in London in 1889. In his " Caprices d'un Bibliophile," pub- lished in 1878, M. Octave Uzanne urged book-lovers to seek out a greater variety of leathers. The French are not afflicted with what Dickens called " that underdone pie-crust cover which is technically known as law-calf," and which is desolately monotonous ; nor have they ever cared either for sprinkled calf, as dull and decorous as orthodoxy, or for "tree- marbled calf," much affected by the British. 158 Bookbindings Old and New. That the French do not take to tree-calf is proof at once of their taste and of their wisdom. Mr. Matthews declares that he does not recommend tree-calf, and M. Marius-Michel speaks of the process of marbling it with acids as "a diabolic invention," since it rots the leather — as every one knows who has the misfortune to own books bound in this fashion half a century ago. The French, with a full understanding of the principles of book- binding, have confined their attention almost wholly to calf and to morocco, eschewing even the pleasant-smelling Russia-leather, which be- comes brittle, and has a tendency to crack, unless it is constantly handled, whereby it absorbs animal oil from the human fingers. In the employment of other leathers than calf and morocco we Americans have taken the lead. Books bound in alligator, and in sealskin, for example, are to be found in any of the leading bookstores, not always appropri- ately clad, I regret to remark. There is a hideous incongruity, for instance, in sheathing the wisdom of Emerson in alligator-hide, fit as Bookbindings Old and New. 159 this scaly substance might be for the weird tales of Poe. Equally horrible is a prayer-book covered with snakeskins ; and both of these bibliopegic freaks have been offered to me by tradesmen more enterprising than artistic. Gautier's " Une Nuit de Cleopatre," that strange tale of the serpent of old Nile, might fitly be protected by the skin of the crocodile ; and Captain Bourke's book about the " Snake-Dance of the Moquis of Arizona" seems to call for an ophidian integument. So might we clothe a volume describing a voyage to Alaska in seal- skin, or an account of Australia in the hide of the kangaroo. It would be a quaint fancy to put our old favourite " Rab and his Friends " in dogskin (easily to be had from the glovers) ; and our new friend " Uncle Remus," in the soft coat of Brer Rabbit. Champfleury's " Les Chats," and M. Anatole France's old-fashioned and cheerful " Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard " could be bound in catskin. In more than one of the old treatises on bookbinding is mention made of an ardent admirer of Charles James Fox, who had the 160 Bookbindings Old and New. speeches of his idol covered with a vulpine hide — which would serve better, it seems to me, as a coat for a volume of hunting reminis- cences. So might the life of Daniel Boone be bound in the skin of a " bar "like that which the pioneer " cilled " ; and the life of Davy Crockett could be clad in the skin of the coon, a descendant of the fabled quadruped which volunteered to come down when he dis- covered that the backwoodsman had drawn a bead on him. Dana's " Two Years before the Mast " would look well in whale-skin, or, if that were too tough, in shark-skin — shagreen. The " Peau d'ane " of Perrault suggests the use of the hide of the animal who once disguised himself in the lion's skin ; and for any edi- tion of ^Esop's " Fables," an indefinite num- ber of appropriate leathers lies ready to one's hand. In 1890 Messrs. Tiffany & Co. issued a cat- alogue of more than a hundred different kinds of leather then on exhibition in their store on Union Square, and ready for use in the mak- ing of pocket-books, bags, blotters, card-cases, Bookbindings Old and New. 161 and the like; and all these are available for the binding of books, if the book-lover will take the trouble to select and to seek for the leather best suited to each tome in its turn. A glance over the list of Messrs. Tiffany & Co. is most suggestive. The skin of the cha- meleon, for example, how aptly this would bedeck the orations of certain professional poli- ticians ! How well the porcupine would suit the later writings of Mr. Ruskin ! How fitly the black bear would cover the works of Dr. Johnson, " author of the contradictionary," as Hood called him! I have already noted one book best bound in snake-skin, but perhaps the uncanny ophidian had better be reserved for those books which every gentleman's library should be without. Yet I should like to see the speeches of Vallandigham bound in the skin of a copperhead. M. Uzanne also advocated that the monop- oly of leather should be infringed, and that books be bound in stuffs, in velvet now and again, and in old brocades. And what could be more delightfully congenial to Mr. Dobson's M 1 62 Bookbindings Old and New. " Vignettes in Rhyme," wherein the poet sings of the days when . . . France's bluest blood Danced to the tune of "After us, the flood ! " — what could be more harmonious to his " Proverbs in Porcelain," than to robe those dainty volumes of verse in a remnant of dam- ask or golden brocade saved from the dress of the Pompadour? What could be a fitter apparel for the " Madame Crysantheme " of Pierre Loti than a Japanese silk strangely embroidered, with a label of Japanese leather on the back, and with Japanese water-colours as end-papers ? In M. Uzanne's later volume on " La Reli- ure Moderne " there are photogravures of books bound in accordance with hints of his — the cartonnage a la Pompadour for one. But of all those who were reaching out in new direc- tions with hope of renewing the art of the bookbinder, Philippe Burty seemed to me to have been the most fertile. One of his tenta- tives was a bold and frequent use of his own monogram in the decoration of his books ; Bookbindings Old and New. 163 especially noteworthy was the skilful employ- ment of this monogram in the dentelle, or border of the inside, oftener than not disfig- ured in America and in England by a hack- neyed " wheel," blurring brutally at the corners. In the bindings of Henry II. and Diana of Poitiers we can see the most admirable utiliza- tion of a monogram and a device ; and here is a model modern book-decorators may follow from afar as best they can. So, too, Longe- pierre made use of the emblem of the Golden Fleece, for which to-day bibliopegic argonauts voyage in vain. In the cutting of special tools, monograms, devices, significant emblems, — masks, lyres, torches, or tears, — each owned by the individual book-owner, there is perhaps hope of some relief from the stereotyped insi- pidity of the ordinary binders stock in trade. It is very difficult to indicate the probable line of bibliopegic development. Only after many a vain effort and many a doubtful strug- gle do we ever attain the goal of our desires. Setting our faces to the future, we must let the dead past bury its dead, and we must 164 Bookbindings Old and New. give up the lifeless imitation of defunct styles. Greater variety is needed, greater freedom also, such as some of the other decorative arts have achieved of late years. The duty of the book- lover is equal to that of the bookbinder; they must needs work together for the advance of the art. For their collaboration to be preg- nant the book-lover must educate himself in the possibilities and in the technical limita- tions of the art. Every architect will confess that he has had many a practical suggestion from his clients, and more often from the wives of his clients; and the influence of the book-lover on the bookbinder can be even more beneficial. In dealing with the ordinary uninspired workman, perhaps the less said the better, and the simpler the work entrusted to him the more satisfactory it is likely to be. Here, per- haps, the most that can be done is to follow the fashion and prescribe the style. With an intelligent binder, fond of his art, and not afraid of a step aside from the beaten path, the book-lover can do much, encouraging his Bookbindings Old and New. 165 ally, lending him boldness, keeping him up to the mark, sustaining him to do his best, show- ing him the most interesting work that has been done elsewhere. The relation of the patron — offensive vocable — to the decorative artist is not unlike that of the stage-manager to the actor, Samson to Rachel, for instance, M. Sardou to Mme. Sarah-Bernhardt ; he can show what he wants done, even though he cannot do it himself. This is what Grolier did, and De Thou, and M. Burty. Thus the bookbinder and the book-lover fare forward together, making interesting experiments, whereby the art progresses, even though the most of the experiments fail. That the book-lover and the bookbinder can put their heads together, it is needful that the latter should be an individual and not a fac- tory. There must be binderies for the com- mercial work (of which I shall speak in the next chapter), for ''edition binding," as it is called ; but " extra binding," the covering of a single volume in accord with the wishes of the owner of that one book, can best be done 1 66 Bookbindings Old and New. where the artist-artisan is at liberty to meet his customer face to face, that they may talk the matter over. Most binderies are little more than factories, with many machines, and a close division of labour, and a foreman who lays out the work of the " hands." This is not the way Mr. Cobden-Sanderson is able to delight us with his lovely design, nor is it the way Trautz carried on his business. An artist as independent as Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, and as rigid in his independence, is best apart; he broods in solitude, and we profit by his dream. Trautz had three assistants at the most ; he was his own forwarder and his own finisher: and the patron had no difficulty in dealing directly with the man who was to do the work. Not only is this friendly relation vital to the progress of the art, but the factory system is fatal to it, when the capitalist at the head of the bindery is willing selfishly to take the credit of all that is done in his shop. For a competent designer, with the proper pride of an artist, so suppressed a position is intoler- able. If the forwarding and the finishing of a Bookbindings Old and New. 167 book are by different hands, the owner of the book ought to know it, and the two men who cooperate ought to know that he knows it. Perhaps what the art of bookbinding is most in need of just now is the establishment of the individual binder, an artisan-artist in a shop of his own with an immediate assistant or two, and maybe a pair of apprentices. Then the binder will sign the work he does, and the work will bear the name of the man who really did it and no othen The superiority of American wood-engraving over the British is due partly at least to the fact that in the United States the engraver is one individual artist, while in Great Britain he is either a shop-keeper or a factory hand. COMMERCIAL BOOKBINDING. COMMERCIAL BOOKBINDING. I. THE ANTIQUITY OF EDITION BINDING. In one of the annual volumes of " La Vie a Paris," stout tomes of cheerful gossip, inter- mitted now that the author is the director of the Theatre Fran9ais, and a member of the French Academy, M. Jules Claretie tells a pleasant anecdote of a contemporary Parisian binder who was asked to cover one of the beautiful books which M. Conquet sends forth spasmodically from his little shop, and who drew back with scorn, declaring, " Sir, I will not dishonour myself by binding a modern book." This craftsman's pride it was, no doubt, to clothe the stately Aldine and the pigmy Elze- vir in fit robes of crushed morocco, decorat- 171 172 Bookbindings Old and New. ing them with delicate gold traceries tooled bit by bit, and lingered over lovingly. To him it would have been a sad shock, had he been told suddenly that, in the eyes of the average reader, a book is bound when it is merely cased in a cloth-cover whereon a pattern has been im- printed by machinery. Yet so it is. Not as ours the books of old — Things that steam can stamp and fold; Not as ours the books of yore — Rows of type, and nothing more. Ours are not the books of old, but sometimes, when they are the result of taking thought and pains, they have a merit of their own ; and the thing that steam can stamp and fold may be as lovely in its way as the poet's missal of the thir- teenth century, around which the illuminator's brother monks sang "little choruses of praise." The beauty of the modern book is not that of the book of yore. There will always be between them the difference which separates work done by machine from work done by hand — a difference wide enough, and deep enough, to admit of no denial. But the vol- Bookbindings Old and New. 1 73 umes stamped by steam may have their own charm and their own qualities — to say noth- ing of their superior fitness for the nineteenth century, when democracy is triumphant. Designed by Margaret N. Armstrong. Published by Charles Scribner's Sons. "ART OUT-OF-DOORS,' BY MRS. SCHUYLER VAN RENSSELAER. The books bound in thousands for publishers are mostly ill-bound from haste and greed, from ignorance and reckless disregard of art. But once in a way they attain a surprisingly high 174 Bookbindings Old and New. level. Just how excellent some modern com- mercial bindings are, scarcely any of us have taken time to discover ; for we are prone to over- look not a few of the best expressions of con- Oesigned by Mrs. Henry Whitman. Published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. " AN ISLAND GARDEN," BY CELIA THAXTER. temporary art, natural outgrowths of modern conditions, in our persistent seeking for some great manifestation which we fail to find. Of a certainty the great manifestations of art Bookbindings Old and New. 1 75 are hopelessly rare; and, as a matter of fact, little things far more often attain perfection and reward our seeking. A chromolithographic placard does not seem to promise much — but in M. Cheret's hands the pictorial poster is never insipid, and has often a most engaging and masterly originality. Cast-iron is an unlovely material — but by recognizing its limitations, Alfred Stevens was able to give dignity to the little lions on the outer rail at the British Museum. So a book-cover stamped by steam may be a thing of beauty if it is designed by Mrs. Whitman or by Mr. Stanford White. It is a fact that commercial bookbinding, often ignorantly looked down on, is now at a most interesting stage of its history; and it seems to me very well worth while to consider some of its recent successes. In a paper on " Bookbinding considered as a Fine-Art, Mechanical Art and Manufacture," read before the Society of Arts in London, Mr. Henry B. Wheatley declared that " cloth-bind- ing is entirely an English invention." Just as the fine-art of bookbinding began in Italy dur- 1 76 Bookbindings Old and New. ing the Renascence, and was most highly cul- tivated in France, so the art of cloth-binding, arising in Great Britain, has been carried to a higher level of mechanical perfection by ma- chines invented or mightily improved in the United States; and I am inclined to think that the principles which should govern the decora- tion of cloth covers are better understood in New York than in London — in so far at least as one may judge from the results of their application. While it is true enough that cloth-binding is an English invention, commercial binding, " edition work," as it is called, is almost as old as printing itself. The early printers, from Aldus in Venice to Caxton in London, were binders as they were also publishers; and very early in the history of the trade were there attempts to simplify the toil of the finisher who decorated the leather sides and backs of the broad volumes. In the finest of the early books every touch of gold on the cover was made by a separate tool, which the skilled workman impressed on the leather at least twice, once Bookbindings Old and New. 177 without the gold, and once to affix it, a slow, laborious, and expensive process. One of the first of the devices adopted as a short cut was the " roulette " or roll, a complete pattern engraved on the circumference of a wheel, and reproducing itself as the wheel was rolled across the leather. This wheel served for borders and frameworks; it was often most admirably engraved ; and its employment was not altogether injurious if proper care was taken to match the corners with precision. In these days when omniscience is everybody's foible it may seem like affectation for me frankly to confess ignorance as to the origin of the roll, but I think it was first seen in Italy. In like manner I must avow that I do not know for certain the origin of the next labour- saving device, but I think it came from Ger- many; and beyond all question its use was most frequent there. This was the combina- tion of engraved blocks into a pattern more or less appropriate to the book. The binder had in stock a variety of these blocks, of different sizes and independent in subject, or related in N 1 78 Bookbindings Old and New. pairs, or even in sets of four; and he would rearrange these corners, centre-pieces, and panels as best he could to suit every succeeding book, availing himself also of the roll, and falling back on hand-work where the occasion seemed to demand it. Careless as this method often became, it was still a crude form of design, even though the toil of the hand was mini- mized to the utmost. But one step needed to be taken to get rid altogether of hand-work on the cover; this was to engrave a design for the whole side of a book, and to stamp it on at a single stroke of a press. These plates — plaques is the French term — were probably first employed by the Italians; but the most noted of those who made early use of them was a Frenchman, Geoffroy Tory, the friend of Grolier, and the would-be reformer of the alphabet. All collectors know the plate he designed for the Book of Hours he printed, which was a staple of the book trade, and for which there was an unfailing demand. Tory's plate was original and complete in itself ; but another plate contemporary with it, and also Bookbindings Old and New. 1 79 reproduced in the invaluable essay of M. Marius- Michel on " La Reliure Fran9aise, Commer- ciale et Industrielle," is incomplete ; it was intended to spare the time and trouble needed to adorn the book-cover with the elaborately interlacing arabesques of the Grolier type ; but it left to the hand of the workman the task of adding the name of the owner of the book, the scattered gold dots which greatly enriched the appearance, and a few other details here and there. It is instructive to note how adroitly the means have been adjusted to the end. These three devices, the roll, the combina- tion of blocks, and the plate complete or in- complete, mark different stages of the develop- ment of wholesale binding; and they existed simultaneously for centuries. M. Marius-Michel declares that out of every hundred of the smaller sized volumes sent forth by the printer-pub- lishers of the sixteenth century, eighty have their sides stamped by a plate simulating hand- work. The original editions of Rabelais, of Montaigne, of Ronsard, and of Clement Marot, were issued more often than not with plate- 180 Bookbindings Old and New. marked sides. There is in M. Marius-Michel's essay a drawing of a block used to aid in the imitation of the brilliant fanfares of " Le Gas- con." There is in M. Gruel's " Manuel Histo- rique " a most sumptuous binding by Derome, in which there was no hand-tooling at all, save perhaps a monogram or a coat-of-arms here and there; it is formed by combining corners and border-pieces, and it was stamped in a press. The chief characteristic of the early German, Italian, and French commercial binding is that it was an imitation of artistic binding done wholly by hand. It was a humbug trying to pass itself off as something other than it really was, and failing, of course, as fraud always fails. It was forever forging the designs it found on the books of the best binders ; and very often its thefts were stupid, although once in a while they were adroit. Now this copying was foolish, because in art the imper- sonal machine can never rival the personal hand — for art is indeed only individuality. M. Zola defines art as " nature seen through a temperament " — and even in the decorative Bookbindings Old and New. 1 8 1 arts personality is omnipotent. But by aban- doning all thought of imitating hand-work, mod- ern commercial bookbinding has a fair chance of developing according to its own conditions. The machine has tireless power of production and absolute regularity; and it is for those who set the machine going to supply that personal touch without which all art is as naught. II. THE MERITS OF MACHINE BINDING. This is the great merit of modern commer- cial bookbinding done by machinery — that it is independent, that it has freed itself from the trammels and the traditions of hand-work, that it is no longer a savourless sham copying blindly, that it lives its own life. It recognizes the fact, obvious enough nowadays, that we can- not all be as Heber, to whom Ferriar sang: The folio Aldus loads your happy shelves, And dapper Elzevirs, like fairy elves, Shew their light forms amidst the well-gilt twelves. In this change Great Britain and the United States have led the way, followed for once by France, and, after an interval, by Germany. It was in frugal Germany that " half-binding " had its origin. Half-binding is a money-sav- ing contrivance, which lordly book-lovers have reprobated as equivalent to genteel poverty. 182 Bookbindings Old and New. 183 The Jansenists used to keep the leather sides of their books free from ornament ; and some sparing German carried this simplicity one step further, substituting paper for the plain surface of leather and using morocco and calf only for the back, and for a narrow but needful hinge on each side. To push this economy a little fur- ther yet was easy; and so it came to pass in the last century that the English binders altogether omitted the leather, and covered with paper both the sides and back. Strictly speak- ing, those books were not bound at all ; they were merely cased — that is, sheathed in boards. A casing of this kind was the most temporary of makeshifts. Every librarian knows how fragile are the paper and pasteboard which envelop the books of the last century. The back is prone to crack and to peel off, and the sides are prompt to break away ; the method was as slovenly and as inconvenient as possible. Early in this century the disadvantage of paper-covered boards led to the use of plain glazed calico in place of the paper. There was at first no thought of decoration : the plain 184 Bookbindings Old and New. calico was substituted for the plain paper be- cause it was stronger and did not chip and tear quite so easily ; the title was still printed on a label of white paper, and pasted on the back of the volume. The exact date of this improvement is in doubt. I have among my Sheridaniana the third edition of Dr. Watkins's " Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan, " printed for Henry Colburn in 18 18, and both volumes are clad in glazed calico, with a slightly ribbed surface and of a faded purple tint. The date of the biography is that of the binding. " Constable's Miscellany,'' the publication of which was begun in 1827, said to have been the first collection regularly bound in cloth ; the cases were covered in the simplest fashion with plain calico, and distinguished by a paper label. The edition of Byron's works in seventeen vol- umes published in 1833 is supposed to have been the first work issued without the paper label, and with the title printed in gold on the backs of the books; but certain volumes of a series of " Oxford English Classics " may per- haps have preceded this " Byron." Bookbindings Old and New. 187 Stamping was probably done by a handpress, such as British binders kept ready to impress on the sides of leather-covered volumes the broad block with the owners arms. From this " arming-press," as it was called, has been evolved by slow degrees the powerful and rapid machinery of the modern bindery. Mur- ray's " Family Library " was probably the first series on which the title was printed with ordinary ink. Then came, in 1832, Charles Knight's "Penny Magazine," and, in 1833, his " Penny Cyclopaedia," the successive volumes of which were bound by Archibald Leighton in stamped cloth. Mr. Wheatley says that at first the cloth was stamped before it was put on the boards, a proceeding which proved unsatisfactory from the beginning, so the boards were covered with cloth, which was then stamped. Thereafter the art speedily improved. The cloth was dyed to any desired colour; and it was run through rollers to give it any de- sired grain or texture. The old-fashioned arm- ing-press was modified and made stronger; 1 88 Bookbindings Old and New. and steam was swiftly substituted for foot- power. Subsequent improvements enabled the pattern to be imprinted on the side and back of the book in as many colours as an artist Designed by Harold B. Sherwin (the Figure by J. L. Kipling). Published by D. Appleton & Co. " MANY INVENTIONS," BY RUDYARD KIPLING. could use to advantage or the publisher was willing to pay for. And the work can be done with extraordinary speed ; it is no unusual thing now for a bindery to turn out Bookbindings Old and New. 189 several thousand copies of a book in the course of twenty-four hours. Here we come to the essential difference between bookbinding by hand and bookbind- ing by machinery. In artistic hand-work the Designed by Margaret N. Armstrong. Published by Charles Scribner's Sons. " EVENING TALES," BY JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. book is bound in leather and then decorated. In edition work the cloth case is made and decorated apart from the book itself, which is afterward fastened in. The former is a slow process, and in its higher manifestations 190 Bookbindings Old and New. it is an art. The latter is a rapid process, and it is wholly mechanical, except in so far as the designer of the stamp is concerned. And therefore it is on the designer of the stamp that the duty lies of making beautiful Designed by D. S. Maccoll. Published by T. Fisher Unw ; n, London. " GREEK VASE PAINTINGS," BY D. S. MACCOLL AND J. E. HARRISON. the books demanded by our modern and democratic civilization. In Great Britain those who were called upon to invent ornament for the outside of clothbound books were free from the disad- Bookbindings Old and New. 191 vantages under which their fellow-labourers in France were placed. In France there still lingered the dominating influence of the tradi- tions of the great bibliopegic artists of the past, and there was pressure on the designer to devise a decoration which should make his machine-made cloth cover look like the slowly tooled leather of a book bound by hand. In England where the solid cloth-casing was hailed as a manifest improvement on the flimsy paper-boards which had immediately preceded it, there existed no such pressure, for no one seemed to see any necessary con- nection between the new cloth-work and the old artistic leather-work. So the designers were at liberty to develop a new form of decoration suitable to the new conditions. In this endeavour they have been unexpectedly successful ; indeed, there is hardly any form of modern decorative art which has achieved its aim more satisfactorily. One might hazard the suggestion that there has been less copy- ing and less conventionality, more inventiveness and greater appropriateness, in the commercial 192 Bookbindings Old and New. bindings of England and America during the past thirty years than in the avowedly artistic " extra " binding. Of course there have been countless mil- lions of tomes disfigured by hideous covers ; and of course every one of us can recall cloth cases which were the epitome of everything they should not be. But a selection of ma- chine-made covers most pleasing to the trained taste is equally easy. When Thoreau bought back the many unsold copies of his first book, " A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," remarking with characteristic humour that he had now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, more than seven hundred of which he had written himself, he had added to his collection books probably quite as appro- priately bound as those which he owned before. No doubt if he could see the neat attire his " Walden " wears now that it is included in the trim and tasteful Riverside Aldine Series, Thoreau would acknowledge that he could ask no fitter garb for his offspring. Nor could there be anything more modestly satisfactory Bookbindings Old and New. 193 than the maidenly simplicity of the little tomes in this series, with their smooth blue cloth, with their chaste lettering, and with Designed by Alice E. Morse. Published by the Century Co. "THE CHATELAINE OF LA TRINITE," BY HENRY B. FULLER. the golden anchor of Aldus — a hopeful emblem of good books yet to come. In comparing many modern books to select illustrations and examples for this paper, I o 194 Bookbindings Old and New. have been led to the conclusion that there is more thought given to book-decoration in the United States than in Great Britain. Designed by Hugh Thomson. Published by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., London. "THE BALLAD OF BEAU BROCADE," BY AUSTIN DOBSON. There are not a few beautiful book-covers to be found in the shops of British booksellers, but not so many, I venture to think, as might be collected from American publishers. And Designed by Laurence Housman. Published by Macrm'llan &. Co. "GOBLIN MARKET." BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI, 197 Bookbindings Old and New. 199 the reason of this, I take it, is partly that the British are borrowers of new books rather than buyers, and partly that the British still desire to have the books worth owning bound finally in leather, and they therefore still look upon the cloth case as merely a temporary convenience. The American reader, for the most part, accepts the cloth binding as a per- manency ; and the American publisher is moved, therefore, to expend more time and attention on the decoration of the books he offers for sale. Consider, for example, the gaudy cover which the British publisher put on Mr. Du Chaillu's " Land of the Midnight Sun," and compare it with that prepared by Mr. E. A. Abbey for the American edition. A true book-lover would be in haste to get Mr. Du Chaillu s entertain- ing work out of the British cloth case ; but he would feel it absurd to wish to rebind a copy adorned with Mr. Abbeys cover. He would be ready to echo Hawthorne's protest against those who "strip off the real skin of a book to put it into fine clothes." 200 Bookbindings Old and New. Again, take Mr. Vedder's remarkable edition of Fitzgerald's " Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam," for which the artist designed the cover-stamp. To rebind this folio, even in the most sumptu- ous crushed levant, is to deprive ones self of not the least interesting of the illustrations by which the American painter has interpreted the Persian poet. And what could be more ingenious or more characteristic than the Dutch tile which is seemingly set into the golden cover of the " Sketching Rambles in Holland " of Mr. George H. Boughton and Mr. E. A. Abbey ? Simplicity is an ingredient of dignity, and there are book-lovers who love simplicity above all things, having a Jansenist taste even in cloth bindings. There is nothing noisy or fussy in the cover of Mr. Harold Frederic's " In the Valley," due to the pencil of Mr. Harold Magonigle, or in the cover of Mr. Aldrich's " Sisters' Tragedy," with its severe and yet elegant myrtle wreath designed by Mrs. Whitman. To Mrs. Whitman also is due the credit for the tea-leaf border of Dr. 20I Bookbindings Old and New. 203 Holmes's " Over the Tea-cups " with its vigor- ous lettering, and its subordinate teapot of a fashion now gone by. None of Mrs. Whit- man's book-covers are frivolous or finicky ; they have always reserve and purity. Yet decorations of this chaste severity are not alone on our book-shelves ; and there are not a few devised on other principles and compounded in another fashion. Some satis- faction there is in finding an old German woodcut border doing duty on the cover of Mr. Woodberry's " History of Wood Engrav- ing," or in observing the apt use of the orange with its full fruit and its green leaves as they are wreathed in the arabesques of the medallions which adorn the back and side of Mr. Lafcadio Hearn's " Two Years in the French West Indies," and which were designed by Miss Alice E. Morse, with a full understanding of the value of colour on a book- cover, and an apt appreciation of the technical means whereby it is best to be attained. It is essential to good decorative design, what- ever its kind, whether it be a book-cover or a 204 Bookbindings Old and New. wall-paper, a carpet or a tapestry, a carved panel or an inlaid floor, that the artist shall recognize technical limitations, shall preserve technical possibilities, and shall be in sym- pathy with the materials employed. The dec- orative artist must be swift to seize that one of the processes presenting themselves which will best suit his immediate object " One reason for our modern failures lies in the multitude of our facilities," suggests Mr. Lewis F. Day in his little book on the " Application of Ornament," and he adds that " the secret of the ancient triumphs is often in the sim- plicity of the workman's resources." Where a man has but a single tool, he must perforce devise ornament which that single tool can accomplish, or else go without ornament alto- gether. Out of the struggle comes strength. When we see the rather violently polychro- matic cover which that most accomplished artist Jules Jacquemart placed on the book on " La Ceramique " illustrated by him, we cannot but wonder whether he would not have given us something quieter and more Bookbindings Old and New, 207 beautiful if the resources of modern colour- printing had not been ready to his hand. And yet, nothing venture, nothing have : the decorative artist, if he wishes to get outside the little circle of every-day banality, must try the hazard of new fortunes as often and Designed by Harold B. Sherwin. Published by the Century Co. PANEL FROM BACK AND COVER OF " OLD ITALIAN MASTERS." as boldly as the explorer or the soldier. Often he will discover strange countries fair to see, which he will annex forthwith. Sometimes the search for novelty is re- warded only by a chance fantasticality. A volume of ghost-stories by Mrs. Molesworth 208 Bookbindings Old and New. had a plain cloth cover, from the side of which, as one gazed at it, there seemed sud- denly to start a shadowy figure — due to a stamp which did no more than remove the glaze of the calico, not changing its colour. Colonel Norton's glossary of " Political Ameri- canisms" was covered with a dark-blue cloth turned inside out, and exposing a blue-gray grain, on which there was printed, in the original dark blue, the title, set off by the figure of the fearsome gerrymander. But these are trifles — the casual freaks of com- mercial bibliopegy. III. THE SEARCH FOR NOVELTY. More fertile is the effort to find special cloths for special books, to enlarge the num- ber of fabrics from which the binder may choose. The very step in advance which M. Octave Uzanne urged upon the artistic book- binders of France has been taken by the commercial bookbinders of America ; and we are constantly seeing new stuffs impressed into the service. M. Uzanne claims the in- vention of the cartonnage a la Pompadour, the clothing of a light and lively tale of the eighteenth century in a brocade or a damask of the period. This is almost exactly what a publisher in Boston did when he sent forth Mrs. Higginson's "Princess of Java," clad in the cotton which the Javanese wear. It was what a publisher in New York did when he sent forth Mr. Lafcadio Hearn's " Youma," p 209 210 Bookbindings Old and New. the story of a slave, covered with the sim- ple fabric that slaves dress in. It was what a London publisher did when he sent forth a tiny little tome of old-time fashions, " Our Grandmothers' Gowns," bound with the chintzes and calicoes of bygone days. The American edition of Charles Lamb's " Poetry for Children " was issued by Messrs 0 Charles Scribner's Sons in a half-binding of some woven material such as is used in the nursery for the pinafores of childhood ; and the same publisher covered Mr. Riis's stimulating account of " How the Other Half Lives," with a stuff very like that from which the labourer's overalls are made, a most appropriate garment for a book like Mr. Riis's. Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. have made experiment of a more aesthetic fabric, Persian silk ; they used it for the back of Miss Jewett's " Strangers and Wayfarers," on which it contrasted boldly with the white side bearing Mrs. Whitman's deco- rative lettering imprinted in the colour of the silk ; and they employed it again for Brown- ing's latest volume of poems, " Asolando," in Bookbindings Old and New. 211 this case covering the whole book, one side of which was further decorated by a dignified panel and border of Mrs. Whitman's design- ing. I know of no recent commercial binding more satisfactory than this, or more adequate * A f P f > ■ A copy of the sampler worked by the "girl." Lettered by A. Hilgen- reiner, die-cutter. Published by Charles Scribner's Sons. "A GIRL'S LIFE 80 YEARS AGO," BY ELIZA SOUTHGATE BOWNE. to its purpose, the appropriate sheathing of a poet's last words. This same house published the " Book of the Tile Club," a portly folio bound in sturdy 2 1 2 Bookbindings Old and New. canvas — a material already used by Mr. Mar- vin (for Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons) in the cover of " A Girls Life 80 Years Ago " (whereon the title was printed in imitation of a child's sampler, a pleasant fantasy). The " Book of the Tile Club " was altogether a more imposing tome, with its delightfully decorative side-stamp by Mr. Stanford White, with its prominent (not to call them aggres- sive) nerves across the back, with its brass- bound corners, with every page separately and securely mounted on a linen guard, and with its personal and peculiar end-papers wherein we can trace the portraits or insignia of the Tilers, with every one his nom de guerre. " The Book of the Tile Club " was aimed high ; and it hit its mark fairly and squarely in the bull's eye. End-papers of special design are among the refinements of book-making, which might be seen oftener than they are when publishers are giving time and thought to the preparation of an exceptional volume. Those in the Grolier Club edition of the " Philobiblon " were admirably Designed by Stanford White. Published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. " A BOOK OF THE TILE CLUB." 213 Bookbindings Old and New. 2 1 5 in keeping with the text. They may even be made useful, as they were in Dr. Eggleston's histories of the United States, where they are maps. But supplementary delicacies of this sort can be expected only when, in the phrase of the cockney art-critic, " the book is illustrated by the celebrated French artist De Luxe." Still rarer is another ancillary adornment to be found in certain proof copies of Mr. W. J. Loftie's " Kensington : Picturesque and Histori- cal.'' These, it was announced by the publisher, would " have painted in water-colours on the front, under the gilt edges of the leaves, a couple of Kensington views, which, until the leaves are bent back at an angle, will be invisible." In Mr. S. P. Avery's copy of the Grolier Club edition of Irving's " Knickerbocker," the water-colours un- der the gilt of the fore-edge are the work of Mr. G. H. Boughton. But this is an excur- sus. There are so many byways of booklore that the book-lover can hardly help digressing occasionally. IV. STAMPED LEATHER. From the beginning commercial binding has concerned itself chiefly with cloth, with but an occasional venture with other fabrics, — linen, or dimity, or silk. The few copies of certain single books, and of full sets of certain authors, which publishers now and again advertise as ready in half-calf, in tree-calf, or in crushed levant-mo- rocco are not really commercial bindings ; they are more or less artistic bindings done chiefly by hand, but done wholesale. Generally they are to be avoided by all who hope to see their books really well bound, for they lack the loving care with which a conscientious craftsman treats the single volume intrusted to him to bind as best he can ; and they are also without the merits of another sort which we find in the best cloth coverings. Sometimes, of course, the sets which publishers offer in leather are honestly forwarded 216 Designed by Stanford White. Published by the Century Co. "THE CENTURY DICTIONARY." 217 Bookbindings Old and New, 219 and thoroughly finished : but for the most part they are hasty and soulless. To the true book-lovers eye no crushed levant can be too fine or too magnificent for the book he truly loves: In red morocco drest he loves to boast, The bloody murder, or the yelling ghost : Or dismal ballads, sung to crowds of old, Now cheaply bought for thrice their weight in gold. Knowing this, some American publishers have issued the whole edition of certain books bound in full leather, and with the covers stamped in appropriate designs. Here we have the methods of the best cloth-binding applied to the best material, leather. These books are as carefully forwarded and finished as though they were hand-work ; indeed, almost the only objection the purist might make against them would be the saw-cuts in the back ; and this objection is minimized by the fact that the volume is now permanently clothed, and that there will there- fore be no need to rebind it. Although plates were engraved even in the fifteenth century to stamp the sides of leather- 220 Bookbindings Old and New. bound books, the practice had long ceased except so far as dictionaries, prayer-books, and bibles were concerned ; and even in its palmiest days the plate was an imitation of a hand-tooled side, and not an original design of a nature appropriate to the individual book. It is the - Designed by George Wharton Edwards. Published by the Century Co. 'THUMB-NAIL SKETCHES," BY GEORGE WHARTON EDWARDS. quality of modern commercial bookbinding that it has separated itself wholly from the traditions of hand-tooling, and that it stands on its own merits. Consider the massive and substantial solidity of the side-stamp Mr. Stanford White designed for the " Cen- Designed by Howard Pyle. Published by Charles Scribner's Sons. "THE MERRY ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD," BY HOWARD PYLE. 221 Bookbindings Old and New. 223 tury Dictionary," and note how different it is in its vigorous firmness from even the most elaborate hand-tooling. Technically, this dic- tionary cover is most interesting, for the design is impressed on damp sheepskin by a heated plate, which changes the tone of the leather, thus imparting to the decoration colour as well as relief. Although I recall the stamped leather cover of the photolithographic facsimile of the first folio of Shakspere, — blind-tooled in accordance with Teutonic tradition, — I think that it is only within the past few years, and here in the United States, that publishers have made a practice of issuing the whole edition of certain beautiful books bound in leather stamped by machinery as though it were cloth. Mr. Howard Pyle s re- setting of " Robin Hood " was issued by Messrs. Charles Scribner's Son's in 1883 with a leather cover embossed with a Dureresque design by the artist-author. Then came the lovely volumes illustrated by Mr. E. A. Abbey with the collab- oration of Mr. Alfred Parsons, and published by Messrs. Harper & Brothers. For Goldsmith's 224 Bookbiiuiings Old and New. "She Stoops to Conquer," an ample folio, Mr. Stanford White devised a cover decoration, modern, tasteful, and graceful ; a border sur- rounded the two sides and the back, here treated as if they were a single plane surface (although outlined straps crossed the back); and a cartouche on the side held the title of the work and the name of the artist who had made the sprightly and refined drawings that illustrated it. The gold of the lettering was of a different tone from the gold of the decorative design ; and by another mechanical device the filleted border was filled by a ribbed surface, Quite as effective as this, although simpler, was the cover of " The Quiet Life " of Messrs. Abbey and Parsons, with its powder of flowers, also due to the ingenuity of Mr. White. From the same publishers have since come the " Old Songs " by the same illustra- tors, the " Sonnets by William Wordsworth/' with drawings by Mr. Parsons alone, and " The Boyhood of Christ/' of General Lew Wallace, the covers of which were all con- ceived in the same spirit as the two earlier Q 225 Bookbindings Old and New. 227 books, although they lacked something of the distinction. Mr. White gave to his handiwork. For the edition of Longfellow's " Hiawatha," to the illustrating of which Mr. Frederic Rem- ington brought his extraordinary knowledge of Indian manners and modes of thought, the publishers, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., prepared a most appropriate cover of buck- skin, and on the rough, brown-red surface of this Mrs. Whitman's side-stamp stood out brill- iantly. So far as I know, buckskin had not before been used in bookbinding in America, although it seems to be a fit material to clothe the many books of frontier life : the late Edouard Fournier records that many of the old monkish bindings were of deerskin — so, as usual, the novelty turns out to be an antiquity. Vellum, which was once a favourite material with the old bookbinders, has gone out of use almost everywhere except in Italy. It was employed in covering the " Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson," for which Mr. George Wharton Edwards designed a rich and ingen- 228 Bookbindings Old and New. ious Renascence side-stamp to be embossed on the yielding leather. Vellum was also utilized by the Grolier Club to clothe its unequalled edition of the " Philobiblon," but in this case the only decoration was the seal of the good Bishop of Bury. Here I come to the end of my notes on the art of commercial bookbinding, an art which, in this mechanic age, is perhaps most flourishing in this country of inventive mechanics. It is one of the most important forms of household art — -of decorative art. Properly understood, and intelligently prac- tised, it is capable of educating the taste even of the thoughtless, and of giving keen enjoy- ment to those who love books for their own sake. There needs no argument to prove that it is not an art to despise which has called forth the energy of M. Giacomelli and Jules Jacquemart, of Mr. William Morris and Mr. Walter Crane, of Mr. E. A. Abbey, Mr. Elihu Vedder, and Mr. Howard Pyle, of Mr. Stan- ford White and Mrs. Whitman. Designed by J. A. Schweinfurth. Published by Little, Brown & Co. "THE OREGON TRAIL," BY FRANCIS PARKMAN. 229 BOOKS IN PAPER-COVERS. BOOKS IN PAPER-COVERS. I. THE SUMMER CLOTHES OF FICTION. When the soliloquizer in the Spanish Cloister wished to consign Brother Laurence, his souls abhorrence, to sudden and certain damnation, he determined to place within his enemy's reach his "scrofulous French novel," to look at which is the ruin of the soul. Although the poet does not so declare it in as many words, I have always believed that this scrofulous French novel was loosely clad in a cover of yellow paper, flimsy beyond question, and as easily destroyable as the soul of Brother Lau- rence. Whether it be due to the French fiction which the British bard declared to be afflicted with the king's evil, or whether it be due to our 233 234 Bookbindings Old and New. American stories, sentimental and adventurous, of the kind familiar since the war as u dime novels," or whether it be due to some more recondite cause, there is no denying the fact that " yellow-covered literature " is not in good odour with book-lovers. Even the collector who nowadays despises nothing, be it never so humble, treats with contempt volumes stitched into paper-covers — mere brochures, as the French call them. So far as I know, not any book-lover is now gathering the books of all sorts which go forth to swift oblivion guarded against hard usage only by a wrapper of paper. There are collectors of book-plates, of postage- stamps, of pictorial posters, but I have never heard of a collector of paper-covers. And yet, as the paper-cover must needs be the work of a typographer or of a colour-printer, of a lithog- rapher or of a designer in black and white, there seems to be no reason why it should be scorned when all else is cherished. The reasons for this neglect are not easy to declare when we consider the many wrappers prepared for magazines, for catalogues, for novels, and for Bookbindings Old and New. 237 children's books, by artists like Messrs. Elihu Vedder and Stanford White, Will H. Low and Joseph Pennell, Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott, Luc Olivier Merson, Carloz Schwabe and Jules Cheret. In one of the pleasantest essays of " As we were saying," Mr. Warner discusses the " Clothes of Fiction," and remarks on the sum-' mer and the winter apparel of romance. "As certainly as the birds appear comes the crop of summer novels, fluttering down upon the stalls, in procession through the railway trains, littering the drawing-room tables, in light paper- covers, ornamented attractively in colours and fanciful designs, as welcome and grateful as the girls in muslin. ... In winter we pre- fer the boards and the rich, heavy binding, however light the tale may be ; but in the summer, though the fiction be as grave and tragic as wandering love and bankruptcy, we would have it come to us lightly clad — out of stays, as it were." The publishers under- stand this desire of the public, and they send forth their summer novels in loosely fitting 238 Bookbindings Old and New. garments — fancy flannel shirts, so to speak, and striped blazers. Sometimes, it may be, the outside is adorned with an illustration taken from the inside of the book, as were Mr. Janvier's " Uncle of an Angel," made attractive by Mr. Smedley's alluring picture of Narragansett Pier, and M. Daudet's " L'Immortel," brightened by M. Rossi's pert ballet dancer. Sometimes the wrapper is treated with decorative sobriety, as was Mr. Howells's " Hazard of New Fort- unes," with its sombre symbol of fate. Some- times, indeed, the outside cover is merely an external title-page, having a chaste typographic beauty quite distinct from the pictorial and from the decorative : such, for example, is the stiff paper casing of Mr. De Vinne's " Plantin and the Plantin-Moretus Museum," as it was sent forth by the Grolier Club. But this typo- graphic severity would seem a little austere, perhaps, if applied to a summer novel : yet it is thus that the popular Scribner yellow-covered series is attired. Akin to this, and yet not wholly similar, are the side-stamps designed Bookbindings Old and New. 239 by Mr. Stanford White and by Mr. Francis Lathrop for the successive collections of proofs from the Century magazine. In England the railway novel is incased in boards sheathed with paper; and this cover •PRoors • •frpm Sckibneks Monthly- * and-S 1 Nicholas- •SOU 8NE&& CO * NEW-YORK* • FREDERICK WARNE & CO « LONDON • I88I UlaL m,,MfM,,r,^,r'nmm,,,,m,, ' ... , „ ... ■■»,,■■ „,„■ „„ , , , , „, ,,„■-.. DESIGNED BY FRANCIS LATHROP. is adorned more often than not with a crude and hard illustration of some scene in the story, printed in three colours generally, and wofully void of art or charm of any sort, 240 Bookbindings Old and New. Mr. William Morris has reminded us that "to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, that is the one great office of decoration ; to give people pleasure in the 1-MONTH LY- AND m 5 T H OL AS- ^ . ^ ' CO DESIGNED BY STANFORD WHITE. things they must perforce make, that is the other use of it." Possibly the man who must perforce use the ordinary British railway novels is so demoralized by them that he Bookbindings Old and New. 241 can take delight in the staring and vulgar pictures on the covers of these tales ; but surely no man could have found pleasure in making anything so grotesquely inartistic. Perhaps the reason for this stupidly violent lack of art is to be found in a blind following of a tradition established long before the recent revival of the decorative arts in Great Britain. I have "A Comic Alphabet/' designed, etched, and published by George Cruikshank, No. 23 Myddleton Terrace, Pentonville, 1837, the paper-cover of which has a hint of humorous suggestion in it, perhaps, but which is emphati- cally empty and awkward. To discover the immense advance made by the British in knowledge of the principles of decoration and the striking development of their skill in the application of these prin- ciples, it needs only a setting of this Cruik- shank cover over against the wrapper designed by Mr. Walter Crane for the catalogue of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition held at the New Gallery in London in 1888. This is indeed a pleasure to the user, as it was obviously a pleas- R 242 Bookbindings Old and New. ure to the maker. (To Mr. Walter Cranes services to children, also a labour of love, I shall return again.) Another admirable wrapper made in England — although by an American this time — is the fresh and characteristic cover which Mr. Joseph Pennell devised for the cheaper British edition of Mr. Laurence Hut- ton's invaluable " Literary Landmarks of Lon- don." As quaint as Mr. Pennell's, and in its way as original, is Miss Armstrongs sugges- tion of a daintily embroidered napkin in which was wrapped Mrs. Her rick's pleasant advice as to " The Little Dinner." These designs of Mr. Pennell's and Miss Armstrong's were printed in colours ; and it is in colours that the most attractive of recent French paper-covers have been printed, some- times by one of the more modern processes of chromotypography, and sometimes by the elder method of chromolithography. Here the paper- cover of the published book has been influenced by the extraordinary development of the pic- torial poster in France. Many of the best of the coloured wrappers of recent French books 243 Bookbindings Old and New. 245 have been but pictorial posters seen through the small end of the opera-glass. More than once in these cursory papers on various phases of the complex art of the bookbinder has there been occasion to dwell upon the interdepend- ence of the arts, and upon their reflex action one on the other. And here is another in- stance. The French pictorial poster was de- veloped by M. Jules Cheret and his followers and rivals just in time to be of use to the pub- lishers who wished to send forth their books clad in paper coats of many colours. The same artists— M. Cheret, M. Grasset, M. Willette — were called upon, and the book-covers which they designed were conceived wholly in the spirit of the pictorial poster. II. THE INFLUENCE OF THE PICTORIAL POSTER. If " Post no Bills " were the universal law now- adays, those of us who have the good fortune to live in Paris or in New York would be deprived of one of the most interesting manifestations of modern decorative art. Perhaps it is not wholly unfair to suggest that this nineteenth century of ours is a day of little things, and that our silver- ware, our pottery, our tiles, our wall-paper, our woodcuts, our book-covers, each in its kind, and when it is at its best, are better than our historic painting, our heroic sculpture, or our grandiose architecture. The minor arts have their place in the hierarchy of the beautiful ; and more often than we are willing to acknowledge, they have a charm of their own and a value likely to be as lasting as those of their more pretentious elder sisters. The idyls of Theocritus and the fig- urines from Tanagra — are these so tiny that we can afford to despise them? 246 Bookbindings Old and New. 247 We are all of us prone to underestimate the value of contemporary labour when it is bestowed on common things. Often we fail altogether to see the originality, the elegance, the freshness, — in a word, the art, — of the men who are mak- ing the things which encompass us roundabout. Possibly the Greek did not consider the beauty of the vase he used daily, the form of which is a pure joy to us ; and probably the Oriental worker at the loom cannot guess the pleasure we shall take in his subtle commingling of colour in the wools of the rug he is weaving. So it is small wonder that the pictorial posters which adorn our blank walls pass by unperceived, and that we do not care to observe the skill which has gone to their making. Yet the recent development of the pictorial poster in France and in America is worthy of careful considera- tion by all who take note of the artistic currents of our time. More than once has this or that distin- guished French painter or architect stooped to design a poster for the play or for the book of some friend. But for the most part the 248 Bookbindings Old and New. posters of these artists are muddled and ineffec- tive ; they lack the solid simplicity of motive which is the essential of a good advertisement; they are without the bold vigour of design which the poster demands ; and they are with- out the compression and relief of lettering which it requires. These are qualities which the ordinary artist, not seeking, has not achieved, perhaps because he half despised his task. These are the qualities which no one could fail to find in the work of the masters of the poster in France, M. Jules Cheret, M. Willette, M. Grasset. In their advertisements we dis- cover a perfect understanding of the conditions of this form of pictorial art. The first of these conditions is that the poster shall attract attention at all costs ; and the second is that it shall satisfy the eye at all hazards. Thus we see that the poster may be noisy, — and noisy it often is, no doubt, — but it must not be violent, just as even a brass band ought ever to play in tune. And the paper-cover is a younger sister of the pictorial poster. The conditions under which paper-covers can be Bookbindings Old and New. 249 effective and accomplish their purpose are the same as those under which the pictorial poster is restrained. Indeed, the alliance between these two forms of chromatic decoration had been close for some time. Certain of M. Cheret's boldest and most vigorous compositions were for the pur- pose of advertising new books or new editions — M. Robida's " Rabelais," for example, and the " Three Musketeers " of the elder Dumas. Perhaps the point of contact is to be sought in the wrappers for sheet-music and for the scores of operas. The drawing prepared by M. Georges Clairin for M. Massenet's opera " Le Cid " had been enlarged to serve as a poster; and in like manner M. Willette's delightfully charac- teristic design of the old and the young Pierrots for the witty and pathetic pantomime of " L'En- fant Prodigue " did double duty. Any one who has had the good fortune of late to spend even twenty-four hours in Italy must have observed not a few Italian posters, chiefly railroad advertisements, having a quality of their own, a national note, perhaps best to 250 Bookbindings Old and New. be characterized as a broad richness of colour not unlike that to which we are accustomed in Roman scarfs and Bellagio rugs. In the brill- iancy of some of these posters I have thought I detected the influence of the little group of Hispano-Roman painters ; and I have noted also the decorative methods of the lithographic designers who have devised the showy but not inartistic covers for the sheet-music issued by the Milanese publisher, Signor Ricordi. M. Maindron, the first historian of the pictorial poster, has declared that Signor Simonetti, the water-colourist, is to be credited with the elabo- rate posters announcing the Exposition of Turin some six or seven years ago. It may be doubted whether these Italian posters are really any more effective — even the best of them — than the best of the striking and brill- iant paper-covers with which Signor Ricordi adorns the music he publishes. Fine as is not a little of the work of these Italians both in the pictorial poster and in the paper-cover, it is on the whole not equal to that of the Frenchmen, M. Jules Cheret, M. Grasset, Bookbindings Old and New. 251 and M. Willette. Of these, M. Cheret is the pioneer, and although I confess a great liking for the Byzantine compositions of M. Grasset, I cannot but think that M. Cheret is still to be hailed as the master of these two branches of the decorative art. We are all profoundly grateful to M. Cheret that he has enlivened the dull gray walls of Paris by lightly draped and merrily dancing figures, giving a suggestion of life and warmth to the wintry streets of the French capital. These aerial bodies, with their diaphanous drapery and their swift movement, suggest the figures frescoed on the walls of Pompeii ; and M. Cheret is not without his share of the Latin ease and verve which forever fixed these Pom- peian girls as a joy to the world. He has also the bold stroke of the Japanese artist, and he has, moreover, the Japanese faculty of suppress- ing needless details : for there is never any nig- gling, any finicky cross-hatching, any uncertainty, in M. Cheret's work. He is an impressionist in one sense of the word, — an impressionist who has a masterly command of line and an absolute 252 Bookbindings Old and New. control of colour, and who uses these to make you perceive what has impressed him. The figure he sketches may be as saucy as you please, but there is no slouch about the composition. To describe his work adequately we must, as M. Henry Lavedan suggested, borrow from this decorator certain of his own colours, a lemon-yellow, and a geranium-red, and a mid- night-blue ; and even then we should lack the cunning of the artist so to juxtapose these as to reproduce his effects. Almost equally difficult is it to reproduce here what is most representa- tive in M. Cherets work; for above all else is he a colourist, and the attempt to translate his work into the monochrome of typography is little less than a betrayal. The compact and skilful composition can be shown, and the force of the drawings; but the effort to transfer the charm of the colour is foredoomed to failure. In M. Cherets book-covers we see the same freshness of touch, the same Japanese freedom of design, the same fantasy of invention, the same exceeding skill in the combination and contrast of simple colours, which delight us in 253 Bookbindings Old and New, 255 his pictorial posters. We see also the same ingenuity in the adapting of the means to the end. M. Cheret's decoration, when he has been most inspired, consists of a single design covering the back and both of the sides of the wrapper, and adroitly devised so that each side has its own ornament. An excellent example of this is his cover for a sensational novel called " Pile de Pont," with its single stalwart figure of a man projected blackly within the light circle made by an arch of the bridge and its reflec- tion in the water flowing placidly beneath, while the bridge extends its successive arches one behind the other across the back and around the other side of the wrapper. Another example is the cover of M. Lefevre's " Scara- mouche," with its Mephistophelian figure sil- houetted sharply above the joyous trio of Pierrot, Columbine, and Harlequin. This wrapper is unusually effective and harmonious in colour. Of M. Willette's cover for " L'Enfant Pro- digue " I have already made mention. Of M. Grasset's cover for the " Dix Contes " of M. Jules Lemaitre I have no space to speak at 256 Bookbindings Old and New. length. It is one of the most elaborate and sumptuous of French paper-covers, and, like M. Grasset's pictorial posters, it suggests the rich and solid translucency of stained glass. Modern and French as are both M. Grasset and M. Cheret, the one seems to have found his inspiration in a mediaeval cathedral, and the other in a Japanese theatre. In the richly polychromatic design M. Auriol has made for M. Octave Uzanne's " Contes pour les Biblio- philes," perhaps the first thing to strike us is a certain rigidity of the reading figures who pass before us in " stained-glass attitudes." In the equally unusual and effective decora- tion M. Carloz Schwabe devised for M. Emile Zola's ecclesiastical tale, " Le Reve," probably what we note before anything else is the strange complication of the design and its elaborate symbolism. Of M. Steinlen I know no pictorial poster; but none the less is he the author of two of the most novel of recent French book-covers. One is for a book of M. Aristide Bruant's unconventional and unspeakable songs of the E.B1ARD0T Edilsur."22. Place de la Madeleine. PARIS DESIGNED BY WILLETTE. 2 57 5 Bookbindings Old and New. 259 Paris streets, " Dans la Rue/' It consists of a file of sandwichmen, beginning with a weather-worn old fellow (on the front), and extending (around the back) out into the gas- lit darkness of a damp and wintry boulevard. The other was made for one of M. Jules Moi- naux's humorous legal year-books, " Les Tri- bunaux Comiques." Here the artist makes a clever and novel combination of figures col- oured naturally, with solid silhouettes extend- ing in panoramic procession around the back of the volume. Less unexpected are two other French paper-covers herewith reproduced. Full of character is that which appears on the out- side of " Bric-a-Brac," an album of comic sketches by that delightful pictorial humourist, the Franco-Russian who calls himself Caran d'Ache. Pleasantly rococo is the eighteenth century flavour of the design with which M. Louis Morin has adorned the cover of a recent illustrated edition of Gautier's " Petit Chien de la Marquise." One of the most amusing of M. Cheret's 260 Bookbindings Old and New. covers is that prepared for the illustrated cata- logue of the " Exposition des Arts Incoherents," in 1886; it is as artistic and as incoherent as any of the studio jokes which may have been Designed by Caran d'Ache. Paris ■ E. PJon Nourrit 8c Co. shown in the exhibition itself. Especially note- worthy is the humour with which the pictures on both the sides and the back are combined and yet kept separate. Mr. Harry Furniss con- Bookbindings Old and New. 263 fined his design for a British pamphlet about the " Pictures of 1891 " to the front of the wrapper, which had for its centre a palette with portraits of the best-known artists of London. Designed by Louis Morin. Paris : L. Conquc-t. III. BRITISH AND AMERICAN PAPER-COVERS. Covers of exhibition catalogues seem closely akin to covers of magazines, except that the former may be sportive while the latter are TWCENTURT ILLUSTRATED >ONTHLY^ [AGAZIN DESIGNED BY ELIHU VEDDER. condemned to greater seriousness by reason of their longer permanence. Many of the leading artists of the day have designed wrappers for magazines. The former cover of The Cen- 264 Bookbindings Old mid New. 265 tury was invented by Mr. Stanford White, and redrawn by Mr. Elihu Vedder, and the present cover was devised by Mr. Stanford White ; that of the new Scribners is by Mr. Stanford White ; that of the English Illustrated Magazine is by Mr. Walter Crane. Messrs. Abbey and Parsons THE CENTURY ILLUSTRATED ® MONTHLY® MAGAZINE DESIGNED BY STANFORD WHITE. prepared the cover for the British edition of Harpers — to my mind far more appropriate than the cover of the American edition, a rem- iniscence of the old Bentleys Miscellany. Mr. Francis Lathrop drew a dignified cover-design for the dead and gone Manhattan ; and M. Luc Olivier Merson made a design equally dignified for the equally defunct Paris Illustre. Mr. 266 Bookbindings Old and New. Bertram Goodhue's wrapper for his quarterly Knight Errant, with its vague suggestion of " Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came," is worthy to be compared with the Century Guild Hobby-Horse — also the organ of authors and DESIGNED BY WALTER CRANE. artists dissatisfied with their environment and with their epoch. To be noted also are certain of the covers made by Mr, W. H. Bradley for the Chicago Inland Printer; and not to be omitted Bookbindings Old and New. 267 is the graceful and classic design by Mr. Will H. Low now seen on the Bookbuyer. " That there is a character in American design which is hardening into style, I think every ILLUSTRATED=160PAGES=ONE SHILLING HARPERS AONTHLT AAGAZINE JAMES R. OSGOOD, MSILVAiNE & COHEANY. 45, ALBEMARLE STREET, LONDON. W. HARPERJcBROTHERS, HMKL1N SQUARE, NEW YOKK. LONDON OTFICE, 45 ALBEMARLE JSTKEET.^ one who has had much to do with American designers will agree," wrote the lady who is the chief of the Associated Artists, a few years ago; and Mrs. Wheeler went on to 268 Bookbindings Old and New. declare that this American style seems to possess three important qualities : " First, abso- lute fidelity and truth, as shown in Japanese art ; second, grace of line, which perhaps comes from familiarity with the forms of the Renascence; and third, imagination, or indi- viduality of treatment" In its own way the American pictorial poster has felt the influ- Bookbindings Old and New. 269 ence of this forward movement ; and it can be called to bear witness in behalf of Mrs. Wheeler's declaration, just as her own embroid- eries and textiles can, or the La Farge and Tiffany stained glass, or any other latter day DESIGNED BY WILL H. LOW. development of the art instinct of the American people. A habit of the German periodical Daheim of changing its cover with every issue, gives the outside of this publication a certain fresl> 270 Bookbindings Old and New. ness not always to be discovered on the inside. The habit has been adopted also by the French monthly Figaro Illustre, which reproduces polychromatically a water-colour drawing of one MARCH, 1894 m. HARVARD [GRADUATES MAGAZINE PU5LlSnEDE>Y ThE tl ARVARD • G RADUATES' Aagazine Association 6-Beacon St. • Boston • Aass. or another of the brilliant French painters of the day. Perhaps the monthly change of the design allows the paper-cover to serve also as a pictorial poster to draw the attention of those who pass by the stall on which it is exposed Bookbindings Old and New. 271 to the appearance of the new number. One American periodical has acquired the same habit, The Ladies Home Journal, which has reproduced on its broad front page drawings by most of the leading American artists in black and white. A former cover of St. Nicholas, the chil- dren's magazine, was designed by Mr. Walter Crane, to whom, for that and for other things, the gratitude of the nursery is forever due. Its present cover was drawn by Mr. Harold B. Sherwin. When Robert Louis Stevenson, in his " Child's Garden of Verses," sings of " Picture Books in Winter," he tells us that All the pretty things put by Wait upon the children's eye, Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks, In the picture story-books. We may see how all things are, Seas and cities, near and far, And the flying fairies' looks, In the picture story-books. • But these illuminated horn-books, these tiny tomes of youthful joy, are the guerdon of the 272 Bookbindings Old and New. children of the present. The children of the past knew them not. " The New England Primer " had a cover of the utmost typographic severity, as dignified and as scornful of vain delights as the " Bay Psalm Book " itself. Learning was not made alluring for the sons of the Pilgrim Fathers, nor for their grand- sons. I doubt not that Jonathan Edwards would have denounced " Reading without Tears " as a pestilent and irreligious work. Yet a score of years before the American metaphysician was born, a French metaphy- sician had published a book on the " Educa- tion of Daughters," in which he advised that the young be taught to read in cheerful fairy tales, so that the labour may be lightened. Fenelon even ordered that a well-bound book be given to the child — a book with gilt edges and fine illustrations. But the treatise of the Archbishop of Cambrai had been written origi- nally for his friends the Duke and Duchess of Beauvillier; and only in the households of the rich could the children be gratified and incited by "well-bound books with gilt edges and fine engravings." THE BABY'S-OPFRA J ■ c signed by Walter Crane. By permission of Edmund Evans. T 273 London : George Rutledge & Sons. Bookbindings Old and New. 277 For the most part the little volumes pre- pared for the use and behoof of the young were but shabby things, often little better than chap-books. The first edition of Goldsmith's "Goody Two Shoes" — if indeed it be Gold- smith's of a surety — is rudely manufactured; and so were most books for the young until within a quarter of a century ago. They were vilely illustrated ; and they had coloured covers crude and violent in outline and in tint Then — -it was in 1865 — Mr. Walter Crane began designing children's toy-books in associa- tion with Mr. Edmund Evans, engraver and colour-printer. In 1870 was published " This Little Pig went to Market," with its strong, definite outlines, and its flat, bright colours, and with its cover as seemly, as decorous, and as decorative as any baby, however fastidious, might wish. In 1875 began another series of eight larger toy-books, with a uniform wrapper; among these were " Beauty and the Beast " and an " Alphabet of Old Friends." Then, in 1876, came "The Baby's Opera," and in 1879 "The Baby's Bouquet," and in 1886 "The 278 Bookbindings Old and New. Baby's Own ^Esop," all attired in printed paper-covers mounted on pasteboard, most harmonious in colour and inventive in design. And all these books and many more were devised by Mr. Crane not for the children of the rich only, not for the daughters of the Duchess of Beauvillier, but for the children of the poor, able to pay only a sixpence, it might be, for the beginning of the baby's library. After Mr. Crane had shown the way, Miss Kate Greenaway began to follow in his foot- steps with her exquisite little books for little people; and so did the late Randolph Calde- cott, with his more robust drawing. It was in 1878 that Caldecott published the first of his picture-books — " The House that Jack Built"; and in the same year came out the second " John Gilpin." Fourteen more ap- peared in the next seven years, ending with " The Great Panjandrum Himself," which bore the date of 1885. It was in 1879 that Miss Greenaway published the first of her picture- books, the well-known " Kate Greenaway 's Bookbindings Old and New. 283 Little Folks' Painting Book " ; and in the same year came also her " Under the Window." " The Kate Greenaway Birthday-Book " bears the date of 1880, and the " Mother Goose" appeared the year after. I am under the impression that it is to a study of Miss Greenaway 's simple and quaint drawings that M. Boutet de Monvel owes his inspiration for the French picture-books for children that he has published in Paris more recently. Perhaps this is the first time any British artist has influenced a Frenchman since the Fontainebleau school rediscovered landscape in the paintings of Constable. I have been able to give but a hasty glance over a field where there is much to be gleaned by the patient labourer; but I trust I have succeeded in suggesting that the paper-cover is not a thing to be despised, that it may be a thing of beauty, and that it may be a thing of value. One word of warning, and I have done : never destroy the paper-cover of a book, even of the least important pamphlet. The integument is an integral part of the book ; 284 Bookbindings Old and New. and if the book is worth keeping, so is its cover, which should be bound in always. The wrapper may contain advertisements or other THEATRE DEU RENAISSANCE LDUGND DESIGNED BY BOUTET DE MONVEL. information, or it may have a portrait or some other illustration not contained within the book itself ; and then if you remove the wrapper Designed by Kate Greenaway. By permission of Edmund Evans. London : George Rutledge & Sons. Bookbindings Old and New. 287 your book will never be perfect. It will always be short of something ; it will always be defec- tive and incomplete, even though it should be in the binding of a Trautz-Bauzonnet or of a Cobden-Sanderson. THE GROLIER CLUB OF NEW YORK. THE GROLIER CLUB OF NEW YORK. L NEW YORK AND ITS CLUBS. Once upon a time M. Francisque Sarcey, wishing to express his abhorrent contempt for a poor play, doubted whether it would please even the inhabitants of Carpentras or of New York. I think we New Yorkers may fairly pro- test against this likening of our fellow-citizens to the dwellers in the Boeotia of France, even though we do not dare to call our city the Athens of America. In the noisy and futile discussion as to the future literary capital of these United States, one agreement was clear above the din, that this country had not as yet such a focus of intellectual, political, and material activity as London was in the days 291 292 Bookbindings Old and New. of Queen Elizabeth ; and to the want of one such here Lowell attributed much of the " backwardness and provincialism of our own literature." Although there is, very fortunately, a cen- trifugal tendency in our system of politics and education, aiding in the starting of little literary centres here and there throughout the land, it is clear also, I think, that there is quite as strong a centripetal tendency towards the concentration of a large portion of the intel- lectual, material, and political activity of the United States here in the city of New York. And it will be well for us if the intellectual activities are not pushed aside and thrust under by the overmastering stress of material or political activities. The fact that most of the leading American publishing houses are in New York may bear witness chiefly perhaps to the material activity of the city; but the fact that most of the best magazines and reviews (weekly and monthly) issue hence, and that most of the exhibitions and sales of pictures are held here, goes to Bookbindings Old and New. 293 show that the intellectual movement is not sluggish. This movement is strengthened and sustained by many clubs and associations of all sorts and for all purposes, made up of little knots of men interested in one or another manifestation of literature or art. I need not refer to the Authors Club, housed for several years, oddly enough, over the Fencers' Club, and having so many members in common with it that the fighting editor was no myth and the quarrels of authors under this roof were briefer and more pointed and less acrimonious than those recorded by Disraeli. I need do no more than note the disputatious Nineteenth Century Club ; the venerable Century and the revived University Clubs ; the Tile Club ; the kindred Salmagundi and Kit-Cat Clubs ; the old Greek Club and the new Library Club ; the Archi- tectural League ; the Aldine Club, composed of the men who make books ; and The Players (the Garrick Club of New York), with its beau- tiful home in Gramercy Park and its fine gallery of histrionic portraits, both presented by Edwin Booth. A rare wealth of material will lie ready 294 Bookbindings Old and New. to the hand of the Dr. Francis of the twentieth century who may write about old New York clubs ; but I doubt if he shall find anywhere in his catalogue a more interesting association than the Grolier. The Grolier Club is a gathering of those who love books for their external beauty — for the choice quality of the paper, for the graceful firmness of the type, for the even clearness of the presswork, for the harmonious elegance of the illustrations, and for the decorative skill bestowed on the binding. Its constitution de- clares that "its object shall be the literary study and promotion of the arts pertaining to the production of books." That is to say, the Grolier Club is interested in books not as literature but as works of art. It is with the . art and mystery of the book-maker, the printer, the engraver, and the binder, and not with the secrets of authorship, that the members of the Grolier Club concern themselves, although many of them are scholars and students of litera- ture. They are true book-lovers, and not mere book-hoarders ; they are bibliophiles, not Bookbindings Old and New. 295 bibliomaniacs ; they love a book for its in- trinsic beauty, not for its accidental rarity ; they cherish a volume because of its charming vignettes or its vigorous press-work, not because it belongs to " the good edition — the one with the two misprints " : Ah, je la tiens ! — Que je suis aise ! C'est bien la bonne Edition Car viola, pages quinze et seize, Les deux fautes d'impressoin Qui ne sont point dans la mauvaise. THE GROLIER ARMS. II. GROLIER HIMSELF. The Grolier Club is named after Jean Grolier de Servier, Viscount d'Aguisy, Treasurer-Gen- eral of France, who was a book-lover choosing the best impressions of the best editions of the best books and having them bound by the best binders under his own supervision. Grolier was one of the earliest of the great bibliophiles of France. The French have always been first in their affection for choice tomes, and they have been foremost also in the skill and the taste of their book-making. Mr. Lang, in his delight- fully easy and learned treatise on " The Library," has quoted Dante's reference to " the art that is called illuminating in Paris " : L 'onor di quell' arte Ch* allumare e chiamata in Parisi. In the century and a half which elapsed be- tween Dante's death and Grolier s birth printing 296 Bookbindings Old and New. 297 had been invented, and the art which is called illuminating had begun to be neglected, but without impairing the supremacy of Paris. Grolier was of Italian origin, and he served for years in Italy, at Milan first, and then at Rome. In 1534 he had been appointed French ambas- sador to Clement VII., and it was then that he began to collect books. After his return to his own country he held several high offices, and he was Treasurer-General of France when he died in 1565 at the age of eighty-six. His library remained intact until 1675, when it was sold and scattered. The researches of M. Le Roux de Lincy, Grolier s erudite biographer, enable us to de- clare that it was the library, not of a collector of literary varieties, but of a scholar who wished to have at hand the best books of his time. Apparently there were on Grolier s shelves few or none of the books which, in M. Alphonse Daudets sharp phrase, are u in- tended for external use only." Unlike many modern collectors, Grolier read the treasures he had garnered ; and their contents were 298 Bookbindings Old and New. worthy of the artistic casing he gave them. He was the comrade of the chief scholars of his time. Erasmus praised him ; and Aldus Manutius, the great printer, dedicated a book to him. A friend of authors, editors, and pub- lisher-printers, Grolier was always very wary in his picking of copies, and he had a pro- vision of fine paper whereon a special im- pression was made for him alone where the common edition did not satisfy his fastidious- ness. These chosen sheets were then clad in leather suits by the best binders of the day, who decorated them with designs full of the delightful freedom of the richest period of the Franco- Italian renascence. It is small wonder that a library called into being with such exceeding care and so adorned by the cunning of the most adroit workmen should have high repute, and that when it was dispersed, a hundred years and more after Gro- lier s death, the separate books were eagerly pur- chased at what in those days seemed full prices. But in the two centuries since the sale the value of these volumes has been rapidly rising, GROLIER CLUB BOOK PLATE. 299 Bookbindings Old and New. 301 until a single tome has been sold by auction for nearly six thousand dollars — this is the noble copy of Heliodorus owned by Mr. Hoe. In Paris the National Library, and in London the British Museum, are fortunate in the pos- session of books bearing Grolier's philan- thropic motto; and in New York others may lo. QxyoIUtu l^wjAvtnen €t anmzorum ♦ AUTOGRAPH OF GROLIER FROM CAPELLA'S " ANTHROPOLOGY." (OWNED BY MR. SAMUEL P. AVERY.) be seen in the library of Columbia College and in the Astor Library. Not a few w r hich are owned by members of the Grolier Club ; and engravings of some of these are given here- with ; and these plates will show far bet- ter than any wandering words of mine the characteristics of the famous Grolier bindings. But although these reproductions reveal the grace and the delicacy of the design, they cannot revive the noble richness of the gild- ings nor the artful contrast of the colours. III. THE AIMS OF THE CLUB. The origin of the Grolier Club of New York is recorded in the first volume of its trans- actions. A little gathering of men interested in the arts " entering into the production of books " was held at the house of Mr. Robert Hoe, Jr., in January, 1884. They determined to organize a club, and to that end they appointed committees to present a name and to prepare a constitution. Early in February the members adopted a constitution which declares that the founders of the club are William L. Andrews, Theodore L. De Vinne, Alexander W. Drake, Albert Gallup, Robert Hoe, Jr., Brayton Ives, S. W. Marvin, Edward S. Mead, and Arthur B. Turnure ; and then they elected Mr. Hoe, President, and Mr. Brayton Ives, Vice-President. A club device, including the arms of Grolier, was provided 302 ♦ THE GROLIER CLUB BUILDING, NEW YORK. 3°3 Bookbindings Old and New. 305 a fortnight later. Then the club, having a name, chose a local habitation at No. 64 Madison Avenue, where the council first met about the middle of April — less than three brief months after the first conference. There, in rooms simply and most tastefully decorated and furnished, the Grolier Club made its home for a brief season ; there it took root and flour- ished and brought forth fruit ; there its mem- bers listened to a series of lectures as instruc- tive as they were interesting; and there they held separate exhibitions of etchings, of manu- scripts, of original designs for book illustration, of bindings, and of early printed books. Then in 1886 the club moved into a house of its own, No. 29 East 32d Street, where it had more ample accommodation for its many new members. The architect, Mr. Charles W. Romeyn, carefully considered the special needs of an association of this sort: that he suc- ceeded in giving the club-house a dignified and characteristic physiognomy of its own, the accompanying sketch shows plainly enough. And in this dignified and spacious dwelling x 306 Bookbindings Old and New. the Grolier Club has continued to prosper ever since. Mr. Hoe was succeeded in the presidency by Mr. William Loring Andrews ; and in due season Mr. Andrews was followed by Mr. Beverly Chew. Of the founders of the club, some were merely book-lovers from taste and some were book- A CARD OF INVITATION FOR WHIST. lovers by trade — printers and publishers ; and thus the club began with a novel and fertile alliance of the dilettante and the professional, an alliance likely to be of lasting benefit to both. The object of the club was in reality twofold — to bring together those interested in the arts of Bookbindings Old and New. 307 book-making, that there might be a stimulat- ing interchange of suggestions and experiences ; and also to further these arts in the United States. Although there are an increasing few in America who know a beautiful book when they see it, there are also, alas ! not a few who dwell in outer darkness, and in whose eyes the simple typographic beauty of the Ameri- can edition of Lowells " Democracy,'' or of the British edition of Mr. Lang's " Letters to Dead Authors," is no better than the ill- made tawdriness of the American edition of Mr. Locker's " Lyra Elegantiarum " — a most feeble attempt at bespangled splendour. There are not a few, I fear me greatly, who know not the proper proportions of a printed page, and who do not exact that the cruel knife of the reckless and mercenary binder shall never shear a hair's-breadth from width or height; who do not consider whether the fair white space of the outer and lower margins shall be precisely twice as full as the inner and upper margins ; and who take no care that the width of the page of 308 Bookbindings Old and New. type shall be strictly one-half of the length of the diagonal of the page. There are not a few to whom these niceties are unknown — not a few in the United States and not a few in Great Britain. So far as I know, the Grolier Club is the first society founded to unite book-lovers and book-makers and to gratify the needs and wishes of both classes of its members by col- lecting and exhibiting the best works of the great artists of the past and by producing new books which may serve as types of the best that modern skill and taste may do. This double function of the Grolier Club I do not find in any earlier organization either in Amer- ica or in Europe. Neither in England nor in France is there any society exactly equivalent to this New York club. In London, that useful body the Burling- ton Fine Arts Club was formed " to bring together amateurs, collectors, and others inter- ested in art ; to afford ready means for consul- tation between persons of special knowledge and experience in matters relating to the fine Bookbindings Old and New. 309 arts; and to provide accommodation for show- ing and comparing rare works in the posses- sion of the members and their friends " ; and during the past twenty years it has held nearly forty special exhibitions of works of art, and perhaps ten of these special exhibitions have been akin in subject to those held at the rooms of the Grolier Club. But the Bur- lington Fine Arts Club extends its interest over all the fine arts, and it is as likely to gather and display bronzes or ivories, porce- lains or paintings, as it is to show woodcuts, etchings, or illuminated manuscripts ; while the Grolier Club confines its attention solely to arts pertaining to the production of books. In Paris the Societe des Amis des Livres declares that its aim is " to publish books, with or without illustration, which by their typo- graphic execution, or by their artistic selection, shall be an encouragement to the painters and to the engravers as well as a motive of emu- lation to the French printers," and also, "to create a friendly feeling among all bibliophiles by means of frequent reunions." The Society 31 o Bookbindings Old and New. of the Friends of Books is limited to a mem- bership of fifty with an addition of twenty-five corresponding members non-resident in Paris. Ladies are eligible for membership, and the first name on the list in alphabetical order is that of Madame Adam. Among the other members are the Duke d'Aumale, M. Henri Beraldi, M. Henri Houssaye, M. Auguste Laugel, M. Eugene Paillet, Baron Roger Por- talis, and M. Octave Uzanne. The sumptuous tomes prepared with loving care and untiring toil by the Society of the Friends of Books are known to all bibliophiles through the world as examples of the highest endeavour of the art of book-making in France to-day. The Burlington Fine Arts Club does not publish books, and only a few of its valuable exhibitions are devoted to the arts pertaining to the making of books. The Societe des Amis des Livres publishes books and holds no ex- hibitions. The Grolier Club unites the three qualities to be found in differing degrees in one or the other of these European clubs: it has frequent meetings at which its members Bookbindings Old and New. 3 1 1 may talk shop and free their souls ; it gives exhibitions; and it prints books. (I open a parenthesis here to note that there was once an unpretending little Book Fellows' Club here in New York which printed a tiny tome now and again ; and to record that there is a dining club in London called the Sette of Odde Vol- umes, for whom a few pretty books — mostly of a personal interest and of varying value — have already been printed. But neither of these can fairly be called a rival of the Grolier Club.) I am forced to consider the meetings of the Grolier Club before discussing the books it has published, because certain of its publications have had a previous existence as lectures de- livered before the members. During the winter of 1884-85, the first whole season that the club was in full possession of its rooms, Mr. Theodore L. De Vinne lectured on " His- toric Printing-Types," Mr. Hoe on " Bookbind- ing Artistically Considered," and Mr. Will- iam Matthews on " Practical Bookbinding." In 1885-86 Professor Chandler lectured on 312 Bookbindings Old and New. " Photo-Mechanical Processes," Mr. Elbridge Kingsley on " Modern Wood-Engraving," and Professor Knapp on " Thierry Martens and the early Spanish Press." In 1886-87 Mr. W. j. Linton spoke on the " Wood-Engravers of the XVth and XVIth Centuries," Professor R. R. Rice on " The Etchings of Storm van's Grave- sande," Mr. Brayton Ives on " Early Printed Books," and Mr. Heromich Shiigio on " Ori- ental Books." In 1887-88 Professor West dis- cussed the " Philobiblon," Professor Russell Stur- gis analyzed " Turner s 6 Liber Studiorum,' " and Mr. W. Lewis Fraser considered " Nearly Two Hundred Years of Book-illustrating in Amer- ica." In 1888-89 Mr. George Hannah lectured on " Early Printed Books relating to America," and Mr. H. Mansfield on " The Etched Work of Alphonse Legros." In 1890 Mr. W. C. Prime lectured on " Durer and his Contempo- raries"; and in 1891 Mr. H. Carrington Bolton discoursed upon a collection of books on alchemy and kindred subjects. In 1892 Mr. Frederick Keppel delivered an address on " Some Masterpieces of Engraving"; and in Bookbindings Old and New. 313 1893 Mr. Charles R. Hildeburn considered the career of " William Bradford, first printer in the Middle Colonies." And in 1894 Mr. J. Wells Champney read a paper on " Pastels and Pastellists." The most of these lectures accompanied or preceded special exhibitions of the objects under discussion or of the works of the master eulogized. There were any number of other exhibitions in connection with which no ad- dresses were delivered; indeed these special exhibitions of prints, of portraits, of drawings, of fans, of early printed books, of pictorial posters, of pastels, of etchings and bookbind- ings old and new are too many to be here catalogued in detail as they deserve. IV. THE PUBLICATIONS OF THE GROLIER CLUB. The first publication was aptly chosen ; it was a reprint of " A Decree of Starre-Chamber, con- cerning printing, made the eleventh day of July last past. 1637." By declaring it unlawful, with- out special authorization, to make, buy, or keep types or presses, or to practise the trade of a printer, publisher, or bookseller, the men who were misruling England sought to render print- ing too full of risk to be profitable, and they hoped thus to prevent the expression of the dis- content with which the people were boiling. As it is neatly put in Mr. De Vinne's vigorous and lucid preface to this reprint : " Annoyed by a little hissing of steam, they closed all the valves and outlets, but did not draw or deaden the fires which made the steam. They sat down in peace, gratified with their work, just before the explo- sion which destroyed them and their privileges." 3H DECREE OF Starre-Chamber, CONCERNING Printing, ZMade the eleuenth day of July laft pajl. 1637. f Imprinted at London by Robert 'Barker; Printer to the Kings mod Excellent Maieftie : And by the Affignes of John Bill. 1637. REDUCED FACSIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE OF GROLIER CLUB EDITION OF "A DECREE OF STARRE-CHAMBER, CONCERNING PRINTING." 315 Bookbindings Old and New. 3 1 7 This decree was issued in 1637 ; four years later the Court of Star Chamber was abolished ; and in 1649 King Charles was beheaded. The reprinted decree is an admirable piece of book- making. The type is an old style great primer, with Dutch capitals for the italic letter. The paper is Dutch also, as becomes the first publica- tion of the organized bibliophiles of the city which was once New Amsterdam. The cover is of Japanese paper, folded in the style made popular in Paris by M. Jouaust, and having imprinted on it in gold a facsimile of a book- cover designed by Roger Payne. The second publication is less interesting because the reason of its choice is not apparent. It is a reprint of Edward Fitzgerald's " Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam." It is not unlike the " Decree of Starre-Chamber " in make-up, differ- ing chiefly in that it is on Japanese paper and adorned with head-bands printed in colours from Persian designs. The cover, also from an Ori- ental model, was also printed in colours. Beau- tiful as this book is, it is less satisfactory than its predecessor, because there was no imperative 3 1 8 Bookbindings Old and New. need for it. Although Oriental art in verse and decoration is profoundly suggestive, the issuing of yet another new edition of the " Rubaiyat," however worthy it may be of the noblest set- ting, might seem rather the task of a British Burlington Fine Arts Club than of an American MIRACULOUS ESCAPE OF A GREAT METROPOLIS IN A FOG — HEAD-PIECE FROM GROLIER CLUB EDITION OF " KNICKERBOCKER'S ' HISTORY OF NEW YORK. ' " (DRAWN BY W. H. DRAKE.) Grolier Club. The French Society of the Friends of Books confines its labours to the reproduction and adornment of French books, and there is no apparent wisdom in the de- parture of the American Grolier Club from a like rule to reprint chiefly those books of American authors which lend themselves best to appropriate decoration. Bookbindings Old and New. 319 No better choice could the Grolier Club have made than the work selected as its third publication. This is Washington Irving's "His- tory of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker." Here was a most happy solution of the claims of locality and the claims of literature. Most fitly could the HEAD-PIECE FROM GROLIER CLUB EDITION OF " KNICKERBOCKER'S ' HIS- TORY OF NEW YORK.'" (DRAWN BY HOWARD PYLE.) Grolier Club bend its energies to the prepara- tion and production of a rich and worthy edition of a book about New York by the greatest of New York authors. By good for- tune the humorous chronicle of the learned and gentle Dutch antiquary lends itself easily to abundant illustration and decoration ; and of the opportunities offered by the late Died- 320 Bookbindings Old and New. rich Knickerbocker the present Grolier Club has been swift to avail itself. No better piece of book-making has ever been sent forth by an American publisher. It seems to me that this cheerful issue of " Knickerbocker s ' His- tory of New York ' " is worthy to stand beside M. Conquet's noble editions of Stendhal's two NOAH'S LOG-BOOK — HEAD-PIECE FROM GROLIER CLUB EDITION OF " KNICKERBOCKER'S i HISTORY OF NEW YORK.'" (DRAWN BY W. H. DRAKE.) great novels, " Le Rouge et le Noir" and " La Chartreuse de Parme " — the models of modern book-making, and altogether the best that French taste and French skill can accomplish in this difficult art. I do not say that the American volumes are quite equal to the French ; they lack, for one thing, the tender Bookbindings Old and New. 321 and brilliant etchings which serve as head- pieces for every chapter of Stendhal's stories; and again, they are without the final refine- ment of the recurring title water-marked in the lower margins of the page. Perhaps the American books have not all the soft richness and easy grace of M. Conquet's masterpieces, but yet they brave the comparison boldly. From cover to core there is a delightfully Dutch flavour in these two comely tomes. The boards in which they are bound are clad in orange, as befits the garb of the only true account of the decline and fall of Dutch rule in America. The paper within is Dutch ; and Dutch, too, are the types, facsimile of those used by Elzevir at Leyden in 1659 — only five years before New Amsterdam experienced a change of heart and became New York, after Colonel Nichols, taking Peter Stuyvesant by surprise, had captured the city. The frontis- pieces to the two volumes are etchings from drawings of " The Battery in 1670," and "The Governors Representative," by Mr. George H. Boughton, who was once a school boy in the Y 322 Bookbindings Old and New. Aurania of the Dutch. The other two etch- ings are views of " Fort New Amsterdam, 165 1," and of "New Amsterdam in 1656," this last being a reproduction of the earliest known print of New York. The half-titles, head-bands, tail-pieces and initial letters are some of them from Dutch models, and all of them are most pleasantly Dutch in spirit; two of them were designed by Mr. Howard Pyle, and the rest were drawn by Mr. Will H. Drake. It remains only to note that the original manu- script of Irving's careful and elaborate revision of " Knickerbocker s 1 History of New York ' " is now owned by a member of the Grolier Club, and that advantage was taken of this to indi- cate in an appendix the minor and yet always interesting changes and suppressions of the author. Except a useful pamphlet of " Transactions " the " Knickerbocker s ' History of New York ' " was the only publication of the Grolier Club during the season of 1885-86; and during the next winter the club confined itself to the printing of certain of the lectures delivered Bookbindings Old and New. 323 before it. The first of these had been by the President, Mr. Robert Hoe, on " Book- binding as a Fine Art," and it was the first to appear as a book. When Mr. Hoe spoke before the club, he illustrated his remarks by specimens of the work of many of the most noted binders, all selected from his own library, photographs of which were thrown on a screen by the stereopticon ; and the published lecture is made more valuable by sixty-three " Bier- stadt artotypes " of these bindings of Mr. Hoe's. Although the plates reveal the extraordinary richness of the lecturer's collection, not all the examples were worthy of reproduction ; and, no doubt, more characteristic ^lustrations might have been procured had a call been made for the best specimens obtainable from other members of the club. The second lecture was on " Historic Print- ing-Types," by Mr. Theodore L. De Vinne. Delivered in January, 1885, it was published by the Grolier Club with additions and with new illustrations. As all know who have read Mr. De Vinne's " Invention of Printing," he 324 Bookbindings Old and New. is a master not only of his own craft, but also of the more arduous art and mystery of author- ship. Mr. De Vinnes style as a writer is as clear and as simple, as firm and as vigorous, as is his press-work as a printer. His wide and deep knowledge of the subject has been so thoroughly digested and it is so pleasantly presented, that I think a merely casual reader, having a Gallio-like indifference to type-setting and type-founding, would find his interest aroused at the beginning of Mr. De Vinne's essay. It is the more fortunate that the subject should have fallen into hands so accomplished, as there is, so we read in the introduc- tion, " no popular treatise about book-types ; nothing that gives us in succinct and con- nected form information about their designers and makers, and that tells us why styles once popular are now obsolete." It is the want of such a treatise that Mr. De Vinne has filled, all too brief as his paper is. As the author is his own printer, it is needless to say that the book in which the lecture appears is a masterpiece of American book-making, a mar- Bookbindings Old and New. 325 vel of the most admirable simplicity. The paper, the type, the press-work, the size and the shape of the page, the adroit arrangement of the marginal notes, the due subordination of the foot-notes, the ample and properly propor- tioned margins, even the novel and dignified binding — all these testify to the guiding touch of a master of the craft. In 1888 the club published, "as a sort of New Year book," so a report calls it, a dainty edition of the late Charles Reade's histrionic tale, " Peg Woffington," suggesting in its mechanical execution the book-making of the century when the lovely Mistress Margaret flourished. The two little tomes were pretty enough, but one wonders exactly why this British story should be chosen for reproduc- tion by an American club. In 1889 the first book of the year was far more appropriate ; it was Mr. De Vinnes delightful account of the Plantin printing-house, reprinted from the Century magazine with additions and notes, all Mr. Pennell's picturesque sketches being printed in varying tints. 326 Bookbindings Old and New. The most important publication of the club, even more important than the " Knicker- bocker," is the " Philobiblon " of Richard de Bury. The good Bishop of Durham holds perhaps the foremost place among all British tj: ®$timte Cotrictbus 3Recensutt » ®[erfitone9[ngitcanetnonet^roles gomrnte &tmotattontimsque Sfett in Collegio fkincetonfe professor II ® $ara $tfota © Cejrtus ® gf i>0\)t Cfcoract Cpi ct lmi>en0t* gjoaetatfc ^rolimanae a?D«rc ■ <2r»licit ' #fjito&ibton tomini fiitarbi be 3IIunflcrttIc cojmominati be 2&urp " -quonbam unelmcn$ii£. €omplctu£~ ->-c£t autcm trattatutf i.sftc in mancrto notfro be=> •£*-31uKrianbe toitcghno quarto Die 2fniiuani -=> anno Domini miuejsimo ttemaegtmn ■«=— > quabcajjcjsimo quarto, static no$fc -^-«$» • tea? quhtquagcjBtimp ottabo pteez > cijtfe tomplcto, pontiffratus? = bnro notftri anno unbt^ — >- timo finicnte ab lau* -« ■ ban Wei Edict* ■ ■> c- ■ «- ■ ter. 2£men.-«3~ REDUCED FACSIMILE OF LAST PAGE OF GROLIER CLUB LATIN EDITION OF " PH1LOBIBLON." thought. The mechanical execution was con- fided to Mr. De Vinne, than whom no one was worthier. The literary labour was under- taken by Professor Andrew Fleming West 328 Bookbindings Old and New. of Princeton, who had already lectured before the club upon the book he was to edit. Pro- fessor West shrunk not from the toil of a dutiful comparison of manuscripts and early editions that a proper text might be estab- lished ; and this proper text, most devoutly amended and revised, the club sent forth as the first volume. In the second was contained Professor Wests sturdy and precise render- ing of the original Latin into our later Eng- lish. These two volumes, long delayed by the ardent and arduous labours of the editor, were followed by a third volume in which was to be found an introduction, an account of the author, and such notes as were need- ful for the elucidation of the work. The edition was limited to two hundred and ninety-seven copies on paper and three on vel- lum, one of which latter is properly reserved for the library of the club. The volumes are clad in pure vellum covers, stamped with the gold seal of the good bishop, while within there is a novel lining-paper, rich in colour and congruent in design. The form is a small Bookbindings Old and New, 329 quarto, with a page six inches wide and a little less than eight inches long. The paper, a so-called " white antique," is American hand- made by the Brown Company, and Mr. De Vinne regards it as whiter, clearer, and better than any English, Dutch, or Italian printing paper. The typography is not merely decent and seemly; it is as exact and as beautiful as the utmost skill and loving care could make it. The type of the first volume, which contains the Latin text, is a pica black-letter; the second volume, which contains the English translation, being set in modern Roman (not old style) small pica. The black-letter types were got out of the vaults of Sir Charles Reed's Sons for Mr. De ' Vinne by Mr. Talbot Baines Reed, and they are drives of punches believed to have been cut in France in the first half of the sixteenth century. There are rubricated initials, of a full-bodied vermilion not often seen nowadays. There are head-pieces and tail-pieces, some of them, and the more ingenious, having been devised by 330 Bookbindings Old and New. Mr. G. W. Edwards. There is a page of fair proportion (as we have seen), and there is a type rightly adjusted thereto; and there is the very perfection of press-work, alike impeccable in impression and in register. Herein indeed we see the final superiority of the best modern printing by improved machines when guided by a fine artistic sense ; such registry as this would be absolutely accidental, not to say impossible, on the hand-presses of the early printers. In the manufacture of this edition of the " Philobiblon " there was the full harmony which comes from a union of knowledge, skill, and taste. It is a delight to the eye, to the hand, and to the mind. At last the book of Richard de Bury had a goodly outside, as becomes the w r ords of wisdom within. To love books and to own a book like this is to have a foretaste of the book-lovers heaven. To study a book like this in an edition like this leads away from vice and conduces to virtue. Indeed we read therein (cap. xv.) that " no man can serve both books and mammon." Bookbindings Old and New. 33 1 In 1889 in an edition of three hundred copies there was published the lecture on " Modern Bookbinding Practically Considered " which Mr. William Matthews had delivered before the club four years before and from which more than one quotation has been taken to enlighten the preceding pages of the pres- ent volume. Externally this volume ranged with the published lectures of Mr. Hoe and Mr. De Vinne ; and internally it was illus- trated as Mr. Hoes had been with abundant photogravures. In 1890 one of the most artistic of the club's publications was issued, — artistic largely because of its seemly simplicity. This was an edition of three hundred and twenty-five copies of the " Areopagitica, a speech of Mr. John Milton, for the liberty of unlicensed printing." For this Lowell wrote an intro- duction, characteristically commingled of wis- dom and of wit: it is now to be found in the latest edition of his complete works. In 189 1 the chief publication was the address on " Washington Irving " which George Will- 332 Bookbindings Old and New. iam Curtis had delivered at Ashfield two years before and which has since been included in the posthumous volume of his " Literary and Social Essays." This was fitly illustrated, and the edition was limited to three hundred and forty-four copies. As the club increased its membership, the size of its editions had also to increase. Hitherto the publications of the Grolier Club had been of two kinds : either they were lectures delivered before the members or they were independent works which the club wished to honour. Now there began to appear a third class, being the catalogues of the exhibitions held at the club-house. In 1891 there was pub- lished a catalogue of engraved portraits of the most famous English writers, from Chaucer to Johnson; followed in 1892 by a catalogue of illuminated and painted manuscripts ; and in 1893 by a catalogue of original and early editions of some of the poetical and prose works of English writers from Langland to Wither. In 1894 there was printed a classified list of early American book-plates; and in 1895 Bookbindings Old and New. 333 a catalogue of books from the libraries or col- lections of celebrated bibliophiles and illustrious persons of the past, with arms or devices upon the bindings. Most of these lists were set off and enriched with facsimiles; and all were models of the typographic art. And akin to these records of special exhibitions held within the club-house, was a volume of " Transac- tions " published toward the end of 1894 and containing the history of the club to the end of its first decade. In this summary list of these several cata- logues, I could not of course refer to two other publications made in the past five years. One of them was an original essay by Mr. Moncure D. Conway on " The Barons of the Potomack and the Rappahannock," of which three hundred and sixty copies were printed in 1892. The other was a facsimile of Bradford's " Laws and Acts of the General Assembly for their Majesties Province of New York. Originally printed in 1694, it was reprinted by the club in an edition of three hundred and twelve copies just two centuries after the laws had been enacted. 334 Bookbindings Old and New. Two other of the publications of the Grolier Club must be mentioned here, — if publications they can fairly be called. The first was a bronze medallion portrait of Nathaniel Haw- thorne, made for the club by M. Ringel d'lll- zach in 1892; and the second was an etching by M. Franc^ois Flameng of the picture of " Aldus in his Printing Establishment at Venice, showing Grolier some Bookbindings," the original having been painted by M. Francis Flameng and presented to the club by Mr. S. P. Avery — to whom, indeed, the library of the Grolier (like that of the Players) is indebted for many benefactions. The membership of the Grolier Club was at first limited to one hundred (it has now been enlarged to allow of two hundred and fifty resident members), but the editions of its pub- lications have generally somewhat exceeded the smaller number, and the unfortunate outsider has sometimes been able to acquire these treasures by the aid of a friend at court. This liberality is in proper accord with the spirit of the inscription stamped Bookbindings Old and New. 335 on Grolier s own books, — lo. Grolierii et amicorum, — setting forth that they belonged to Grolier and his friends. Surely an altruism like this is as rare as the selfishness of Sca- liger, who bade his friends buy books for them- selves. To grant or to withhold, the question is equally difficult — czque difficulter. When all book- owners shall freely lend and send their most precious tomes with ungrudging speed, then will be the book-lover's millennium, which the founding of the Grolier Club here in New York may haply help to bring to pass. And in the meanwhile its members may pine for that book-man's Paradise: There treasures bound for Longepierre Keep brilliant their morocco blue, There Hookes' " Amanda" is not rare, Nor early tracts upon Peru ! Racine is common as Rotrou, No Shakspere Quarto search defies, And Caxtons grew as blossoms grew, Within, that Book-man's Paradise. INDEX. Abbey, E. A., 199, 223. Aguisy, Viscount of [Grolier] , 5 . Aldine Press, 18, 22. Aldine typographic devices, 26. Aldus, 14, 76. American silversmiths' book deco- rating, 151. Amyot, Jacques, 48. Armstrong, Miss, 242. Arnold, Matthew, 117. Assyrian bookbinding, 6. Astor Library, 301. Auriol, M., 256. Avery, S. P., 154, 215. Badier, Florimond, 58. Bedford, Francis, 107, 126. Bewick, 118. Binders of to-day, 119. Binding by machinery, 182. Bindings in cloth, 176. Block design for covers, 177. Bolton, H. Carrington, 312. Bookbinding in France, 89. Bookbinding, early Italian, 14. Bookbinding in Venice, 18. Bookbinding in Venice during fifteenth century, 75. Bookbinding in America, 90, 138, 144. Bookbinding in France under Napoleon I., 116. z 3 Bookbinding in monasteries, 9. Bookbinding, exhibition at the Grolier Club, 108. Bookbinding, forwarding, and finishing, 101. Bookbinding, wooden boards, 10. Bookbinding in silver, 9. Bookbinding, carved ivory, 9. Bookbinding, commercial, 182. Bookbinding, antiquity of edition binding, 171. Bookbinding, technic of the craft, 95. Bookbinding, as it is practised to-day, 98. Bookbinding, " forwarding, 1 ' 95. Bookbinding, the " Powder," 38. Bookbinding, curiosities, 152. Bookbinders of Great Britain, 90, 125. Bookbinders' tools, 25. Bookbinders, modern French, 122. Bookbinder as an artisan-artist, 167. Book covers in calico, 184. " Book of the Tile Club," 212. Book Fellows' Club, 31^. Books first bound in cloth, 184. Books bound in sealskin, 159. Books in paper covers, 233. 338 Index. Books with illustrated paper covers, 238. Books bound in alligator skin, 158. Book-worm, 10. Boone, Daniel, 160. Boughton, G. H., 200, 215. Boule, 80. Boyets, the, 71. Bradley, W. H., 266. British and American paper covers, 264. British railway novels, 240. British booksellers, 194. Burlington Fine Arts Club, 310. Burton's " Book-hunter, 1 ' 3. Burty, Philippe, 153. Caldecott, Randolph, 237, 278. Cape, 122. Caran d'Ache, 259. Castellani, modern workers in silver, m. Cellini, Benvenuto, 9, 18. Chambolle-Duru, 122. Champney, J. Wells, 313. Charles V., 9. Charles IX., 5, 37, 53. Cheret, Jules, 175, 245, 248, 250. Cloth binding, 176, 184. Cloth binding for special books, 209. Clubs of New York, 293. Cobden-Sanderson, 62, 104, 129, 132, 152, 166. Columbia College Library, 301. Conway, Moncure, D., " Barons of Potomack," 333. Coverly, Roger de, 132. Crane, Walter, 132, 237, 241, 277. Cruickshank's " Comic Alpha- bet," 241. Curtis, George William, 331. Cuzin, 122. Dana's "Two Years," 160. " Daphnis et Chloe," 72. Day, Lewis F., 204. Derome, 47, 152. Derome, the younger, 83. Derome, lacework borders, 85. De Samblancx, 122. De Thou, Jacques Auguste, 47. De Vinne, Theodore L., 323, 329. DeVinne, " Plantin." Diana of Poitiers, 54. Dibdin, 84, 118. Didot, F., 14. Dobson, Austin, 161. Dubuisson, 86. Du Chaillu's " Land of Midnight Sun," 199. Edwards, G. W., designs for book covers, 227. Eisen, 86. Erasmus, 5. Evans, E., colour printer, 277. Eve, Nicolas, 57. Eve, Clovis, 57. " Fanfares," 57. Ferriar, 182. Flameng, 334. Fournier, Edouard, 14, 18. Fox, C. J., " Speeches " bound in fox skin, 159. Francis I., 5, 37. Index. 339 Francis II., 5. Fraser, W. Lewis, 312. Furniss, Harry, 260. Gautier's " Une Nuit de Cleo- patre," 159. German binders in England, 147. German bookbinding, modern, 144. Gilson, finisher for William Mat- thews, 106. Grasset, M., 245, 248. Gravelot, 86. Greenaway, Kate, 278. Grolier, 6, 17, 18, 152. Grolier's motto, 30. Grolier and the Renascence, 5. Grolier bindings, 21. Grolier bookbinding tools, 26. Grolier Club, 291 . Grolier Club building, 305. Grolier Club exhibition of book- bindings, 33, 121. Grolier Club meetings and lec- tures, 311. Grolier Club, origin of, 302. Grolier Club publications, 314. Gruel and Engelmann, 122. Gruel, M. Leon, 58. Guinti, 5. " Guirlande de Julie," 58. Hannah, G., 312. Hardy-Dumennil, 126. Hawthorne, 334. Heber, 182. Henry II., 5, 37, 54. Henry II. and Diana of Poitiers, 38. Henry III., 54. Henry IV., 53. Higginson, Mrs., "Princess of Java, 1 ' 209. Hildeburn, C. R., 313. Hoe, Robert, 302. Holbein's u Dance of Death," 157. Holmes, Dr. Oliver W., 17. Horace, 9. Hugo's " Napoleon le Petit," bound in morocco with the " Bee " from the throne of Napoleon III., 155. Hunt, R. M., 135. Illuminated horn-books, 271. Illustrated children's books, 237. Italian bookbinding, modern, 144. Ives, Brayton, 312. Jacquemart, Jules, 204. Jansenists, 71. Joly, 122. Jones, Owen, "Alhambra," bound by Matthews, 106. Kalthoeber, 147. Keppel, F., 312. Kingsley, Elbridge, 312. Knapp, Professor, 312. La Farge, 269. Lamartine, 117. Lamb's "Poetry for Children," 210. Lang, Andrew, 296. Lathrop, Francis, 265. 34° Index. Laugel, Auguste, books bound for Napoleon I., 117. Laurin, Marc, his motto, 33. Lavedan, Henry, 252. Le Gascon, 47, 58, 62. Leighton, Archibald, 187. Le Roux de Lincy, 5, 17, 30, 297. Lewis, English bookbinder, 118. Linton, W. J., 312. Locker, " Lyra Elegantiarum," 3°7- Longepierre, 163. Lortic, 122. Loti, P., 162. Louis XII., 37. Louis XIII. bookbinders use lace- makers 1 designs, 79. Louis XIV., bookbinding during his reign; 68. Louis XV., 72. Low, Will H., 237. Magonigle, Harold, 200. Maioli, 47, 152. Maioli motto, 33. Mansfield, H., 312. Margaret of Valois, 54. Marius-Michel, M.,43, 57, 122. Martial, 9. Mary of Cleves, 54. Matthews, William, 62, 96, 143, 144. Matthews, W., "Modern Book- binding,'" etc., 331 . Matthews, W., " How to Work a Design," 106. Matthews, W., " Bookbinding Practically Considered," 96. Matthews, Alfred, 143. Mazarin Library, 43. Mazarine, Cardinal, 66. Medici, Cardinal de, 9. Merson, Luc Oliver, 265. Moinaux, Jules, 259. Molesworth, Mrs., 207. Monograms, 163. Monvel, Boutet de, 283. Moreau, 87. Morin, Louis, 259. Morris, William, 132. Morris, W., " Hopes and Fears for Art," bound by Cobden- Sanderson, 138. Morris, Miss May, 136. Morse, Miss Alice E., 203. Niedree, 122. Nodier, Charles, 57. Norton's " Political American- isms," 208. Ogier, Guillaume, 14. " Our Grandmothers 1 Gowns," 210. Padeloup, 72, 152. Padeloup's bookbinding designs, 80. "Pandectarum Juris Florentini," 43- Parsons, Alfred, 223. Payne, Roger, 89, 117. Pennell, Joseph, 237, 242. Petit, R., 153. Petrarch, 10. Pictorial poster, 246. Picture-book covers in France, 251. Index. 341 Picture posteVs in Italy, 249. " Philobiblon " of Richard de Bury, published by the Grolier Club, 212, 326. Plantin, 48. Poulet-Malassis's " Ex-Libris, 11 153- \ Prime, W. C, 312. Printers (early) as bookbinders, 176. Pyle, Howard, design for " Robin Hood," 223. Quaritch's "Catalogue of Book- bindings," 107, 126. Quentin-Bauchard, " Daphnis et Chloe," 72. Quinet, 122. Reed, Sir Charles Reed's Sons, 329- Remington, illustrations to Long- fellow's 16 Hiawatha," 227. Renascence, 6. Rhead, Louis J., 143. Ricordi, 250. Rice, Prof. R. R., 312. Riis's "How the Other Half Lives," 210. Ris, Clement de, 30, 53. Riviere, 147. Robida's " Rabelais," 249. Romola, 14. Rossi, M., design for "L'lmmor- tel," 238. Rouveyre, M., on German bind- ings, 148. Ruban, 122. Scaliger, his motto, 33. Schwabe, Carloz, " Le Reve," 256. "Sette of Odd Volumes, 11 311. Sherwin, Harold B., 271. Shugio, H., 312. Silversmiths in France, 9. Simonetti, 250. Smith, R., 143. u Societe des Amis des Livres," 309- Staggemeier, 147. Stamped designs for the whole side of a book, 178. Stamped leather, 216. Steinlen, M., 256. Stevenson, R. L., 271. Stevens, Henry, 122. Stevens, Alfred, 175. Stikeman, 143. Sturgis, Russell, 312. Thibaron, 120. Thoreau, 192. Thouvenin, 57. Tiffany & Co., 160. Tory, Geofifroy, 18, 76. Trautz, 119, 126, 147, 166. Trautz-Bauzonnet, 287. Tree calf, 158. Uzanne, Octave, " La Reluire Moderne," 108. Uzanne, " Caprices d'un Bibli- ophile," 157. Vedder, E., 200, 237, 265. Vergil, 9. Voltaire, 17. Walther, 147. 342 Index. Warner, " Clothes of Fiction," 237- Water-colours painted under the gilt edges of leaves, 215. West, Prof. A. F., 312, 327. Wheatley, Henry B., 175. White, Stanford, 175, 265. White, Stanford, design for " Book of Tile Club," 212. White, Stanford, design for Cen- tury Dictionary, 220. Whitman, Mrs., 175, 200. Whitman, Mrs., design for " Strangers and Wayfarers, 11 etc., 210. Willette, M., 245, 248, 255. WoodbenVs " History of Wood Engraving, 11 203. Zaehnsdorf, "Art of Bookbind- ing, 11 10 1, 129. GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE 3 3125 01410 4836