International studio (24.1904/1905(1905))

Design in Gold-Tooled Bookbinding


and the restraint of the
artist is no longer there
to hold in hand the erring
tendencies of capricious
workers, degeneracy sets
in, and beauty luxuriates
into rankness, running riot
even to the verge of
gaudiness and offence.
Design and artistic repose
perish, and the degrada-
tion of confusion and
eccentricity takes their
place; until at last, wearied
of unsatisfying glare, men
of taste cry out for some-
thing of a nobler sort;
and then, if only the
artist be at hand to give
them what they seek for,
some simpler form suc-
ceeds that fills the eye
with pleasure and satisfies
at the same time the re-
quirements of true art.
Book lovers are not
agreed as to the object
fulfilled by the richer
forms of decoration on a
bound volume. An emi-
nent authority * on all
that has to do with books
has told us, entertaining
a somewhat fanciful be-
lief, that the external ornamentation represents,
in a sense, a portal or gate, on the opening of
which the contents of the volume are disclosed;
and, speaking generally, that no scheme of
design which failed to fulfil—at least, in ap-
proximate form — this quaint idea could be
reckoned amongst the number of the correct. A
more intelligible theory would, however, seem to '
be that book-covers were adorned simply at first,
and afterwards with increasing elaboration, for the
same reason that, at the dawn of civilisition, battle-
axes, tomahawks, spear-heads, and other weapons
of war or the chase were scored and zigzagged
with crude attempts at decoration. As with them,
portions of such objects presented a plain surface
capable of being rendered more pleasing to the
eye, so with the volume bound in a jacket of
simple leather, there was a field on which the
craftsman had an opportunity of adding a decora-
* The late Mr. Bernard Quaritch.

tive something to vary the monotonous uniformity
of a set of leather-coated books. In fact, the
desire to decorate a book-cover is one and the
same with what has led to the ornamentation of
all other plain surfaces capable of such treatment,
whether of stone, wood, metal, or glass.
The leathers available for the binding of a book
are, of course, many in number; but not so for
the binding of a book which is to carry some rich
design upon its sides and back ; for nowadays the
artist who decorates a cover in gold-tooling, and
means his work to live, is practically limited to one
material—the best morocco. Labour and artistic
effort are wasted if calf or Russia leather be made
use of; for after some years, as these leathers are
now tanned and prepared for market, the joints of
the volume are sure to become cracked; and later
on it is po.-sible that the upper and lower covers
will drop from the book which they were intended
to protect and adorn.

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