THE HISTORY OF BOOKBINDING.*
IN a short preface, Mr. Brassingthn informs his readers that his work is based upon a little book, by the late John Hannet, entitled An Inquiry into the Nature and Form of • A Hiatory of the Art of Bookbinding. By W. Salt Bramingtou. London: Elliot Stock. the Books of the Ancients, and that it was at the latter's request that he undertook to revise and rewrite it in the shape of the volume now before us. For which reason he modestly describes himself as the editor, though it would appear, to all intents and purposes, the history in its present form is practically a new one. It is difficult to give, within the limits of a review, any idea of the wide scope and great interest of this inquiry into an important branch of book-lore. Mr. Brassington, in his thoroughness of aim, has even added a long dissertation upon the books of ancient times, which, though themselves innocent of binding, were the forerunners of the leather-bound and gold-tooled folios upon our library. shelves ; and he passes in review every form of document, from the carved bones of the paluolithic age, and the hiero- glyph-covered stones of Egypt, down to the rolls of the Roman poets, and the ivory diptychs of wealthy Consuls. Diptychs might themselves almost be described as a form of binding ; at any rate, they were sometimes used for that purpose by those into whose hands they had fallen in a later age. It was not until the fourth century that the flat book definitely began to supersede the rolled manuscript, and the necessity of covering it with outside boards offered an opportunity for artistic display. Curiously enough, to judge from specimens still extant, the process known as "forward. ing" has been always the same from the very first, varying only in the use of some materials ; but the difference in the outer binding is extremely marked between the successive stages at which the art of bookbinding arrived. The splendour of the outward covering of a book may be said to vary with the intrinsic value of its contents. The beautiful manuscript copies of the Gospel—gifts to the early Church from Byzantine Emperors—not unnaturally were clothed in coverings worthy of their costly preparation. "Byzantine coatings," as they were called, were principally of metal—gold, silver, or copper-gilt—in which jewels were embedded, as massive as they were gorgeous. The printed book of to-day, produced cheaply in its thousands, is rarely deserving of such consideration on the part of its owner.
All things considered, the age of the greatest splendour in bindings was the Carolingian period, when goldsmiths, workers in enamel, in precious stones, and in ivory, vied with each other in producing magnificent cases for the manu- scripts issued to the world by the Eastern monasteries. Not far behind the rest of Europe at this time was the Celtic Church in Ireland, and there are still preserved some exquisite specimens of the cases, or "book-shrines," in which the manuscripts of Irish scribes were kept. Nearly all the monastic bookbinding, to which the author devotes a most interesting chapter, seems to have been of a rather ponderous kind. Though, indeed, this characteristic was not confined to religious books, and there is a curious story of the injury which Petrarch inflicted on one of his legs by the constant weight of a volume of Cicero. Some lighter material was wanted, and for a long time velvet, damasks, and cloth, dis- puted the place with leather. A beautiful specimen of velvet- binding, in the shape of a prayer - book, belonging to Marguerite, wife of James IV. of Scotland, forms one of the illustrations of this book. It is rather strange that leather should have taken so long a time in finding recognition as the material, par excellence, for bookbinding. In the early part of the fifteenth century working in leather had already attained to the position of a high art ; and its use in other respects, for curtains and carpets, as well as hanging draperies, was much more universal than it is to-day. It is pleasant to learn that in the twelfth century England took the lead of all Continental nations in stamped- leather bindings. Winchester, London, Durham, Oxford, and York were all producing tooled-leather bindings—blind- tooled, for gold-tooling had not yet been born at Venice—of very considerable merit; of a merit so well recognised, indeed, that there existed a distinct English school at that time, which was destined to exercise no little influence upon Continental craft. The specimens, of which the author gives illustrations, certainly impress one with the idea of a very advanced artistic feeling, and inspire a lively regret that so few of the results of this industry have escaped the ravages of time. Unfor- tunately, time was not the only enemy with which they had to contend. On the Continent Matthias Corvinns, King of Hungary, collected before his death in 1490 the magnificent library of fifty thousand manuscripts and books in the most costly bindings and cases that art could devise. Solyman II. laid Beige to Buda in 1526, and when the Turkish soldiers took it by assault, the library disap- peared,—the manuscripts by fire, their coverings, bereft of their ornaments and jewels, torn to pieces. Nor was the iconoclastic zeal of the Christian a whit behind the barbarity of the Turk in the work of devastation. The Reformation in England meant nothing less than the wholesale destruction of all the great libraries which herd been collected with such pains and care. Of the magnificent library given to Oxford by Hnmfrey, Duke of Gloucester, hardly a volume was left. Naturally, with the quick multiplication of books which began upon the introduction of printing, the bookbinders' art found at once greater employment and less incentive to excellence, the quantity of bindings detracting from their quality. Nevertheless, the standard was still a high one, and the value of books, and the comparative rarity which they yet enjoyed, are testified to by the curious practice, which for a long time obtained in England, of keeping them in chains. There are still some places, chiefly churches, whose old bookshelves may be seen to which the contents are fastened, each with a long chain. Evidently in those days, as now, the student was not always a student pour le bon motif. Among others forms of bookbinding, which now belong only to the past, may be counted embroidery. The least artistic and the least satisfactory, one would have thought, in use ; and one learns with surprise that so eminent a book-lover as Bacon, Lord Verulam, regarded it with special favour. The most important revolution in leather-binding was the introduction of gold-tooling, first practised at the press founded at Venice in 1489 by the famous Aldus. Gold-tooling upon leather was practically the last word in bookbinding, and in spite of the march of time and improvement in appliances, no artistic advance has yet been made upon some of the volumes that date from the Aldine Press, Thanks to those magnificent patrons, Jean Grolier and Maioli, this new departure in leather-work speedily attained a posi- tion from which it has never been deposed. In France, owing to Grolier's indefatigable zeal as a collector and binder, the art of gold-tooling grew apace, and under the fostering care of such patrons as Henri II., Catharine del Medici, Dianne de Poytiers, and a host of others, the golden age of bookbinding set in. Roughly speaking, one may say that the bookbinder's art reached its zenith in the latter half of the sixteenth century. To France also belonged Le Gascon, —no unworthy successor to the two Eves, whose work is still the glory of what our author sometimes calls the " biblio- pegistic art."
Of later English work, from that of Roger Payne at the end of the last century to the bindings devised by Mr. Cobden- Sanderson of our own day, the author renders a very pleasant and sympathetic account. He has also a good word to say for the great improvement, from an artistic point of view, which has been made of late years in the designing of stamped-cloth bindings, an improvement, by the way, which is as yet by no means general. Even cheap cloth coven have their artistic possibilities, a fact which publishers seem slow to recognise. Mr. Brassington shows pretty clearly that he is rather hopeful with regard to the future of the art which he chronicles. It is not easy to share his sanguine opinion. It seems to us that the palmy days of bookbinding are necessarily over, and that its best efforts must be smothered in the enor- mous mass of ill-clothed literature which now fills our libraries. The great majority of people to-day buy books to read, not to keep. Here and there a wealthy book-collector may like to put his possessions into better dresses than the book- trade usually provides ; but even in his case, as a rule, no invidious distinction is made between book and book, and his volumes are rebound by hundreds at a time. The real art of bookbinding can only find expression now and then in a chance presentation copy,—possibly of some one's "minor poems." If anything could help to revive an interest in the craft, it would surely be such a history of it as Mr. Brass- ington now gives us. We cannot sufficiently congratulate him on the way he has succeeded in condensing in one volume so voluminous a subject. His history is not only valuable from a technical and historical point of view, but also extremely readable. It is very fully illustrated with excellent drawings of the most interesting specimens of various styles.
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