Studio: international art (9.1897)

Continental Bookbindings

the tendencies I have named assert themselves in
most countries side by side, the second of the two
gaining ground steadily among the craftsmen of
England, America, Belgium, Holland and Den-
mark.

Apart from England and America, the only
countries to display the modern binding in its per-
fection were Belgium and Denmark. In Coppens,
van Rysselberghe and Van de Velde, Belgium pos-
sesses three artists of the first rank in modern
decoration, especially Van de Velde, the head of
the new Brussels school, who is devoting himself
with the utmost assiduity to all that pertains to in-
terior ornamentation. He is one iof the few modern
artists to bring to bear on his work those business-
like qualities which are indispensable in an age like
the present, with art and industry so closely allied ;
one whose delicate and genuinely artistic spirit does
not blind him—good workman that he is—to the

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bookbinding designed by lundbye

executed by j. l. flvge. Copenhagen

necessity of giving due prominence to the practical
utilitarian side of his work. To my mind Van
de Velde possesses a combination of qualities
of so rare a kind as to place him first among the
artists of Europe to-day. He stands alone among
the decorative workers in his genuine craftsmanship,
in his absolute, certain knowledge of the necessi-
4o

ties of his art. One need not seek beyond the recent
Exhibition to grasp the extent of Van de Velde's
powers, for in his " interiors," shown there, we find
the same admirable combination of the practical
and the beautiful as in his bindings. In all he
does he is quite free from the tradition which de-
mands costliness before everything else. He does
not attempt, however, to reproduce in cheap and

bookbinding designed by e. belville. Paris

trashy form the technical beauties of the old French
bindings, but relies rather on the good old-fashioned
methods, choosing simple designs, and executing
them in a style equal to the best of the editions de
luxe, at quite a moderate cost. Half a dozen in-
struments are all he needs for the tooling, whereas
the old binders required a hundred to produce the
complicated designs of the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries. On the binding of La Culture
Artistique en Amcrique he used three tools only,
the work being altogether in keeping with the
simple and charming style of the book itself. In
Eournier's Art de la Keliure en France he used
morocco, tooled in gold, applying a classic tech-
nique to a classic material, but with a plain, yet
highly decorative, design, in complete contrast to
the over-ornamentation so frequently seen in an-
tique bindings. Perhaps the branch of the binding
art in which this artist is seen at his best is the
cartonnage. Here his work excels anything that
has been done either in England, in Scandinavia,