Bookbinders

Bookbinders

Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book from a number of folded or unfolded sheets of paper or other material. It usually involves attaching a book cover to the resulting text-block.

People who were bookbinders were usually associated with printmaking and bookselling

There were historically three divisions of the bookbinding trade

1. Stationery or vellum binding - making new books intended to be written into, such as accounting ledgers, business journals, and guest log books, along with other general office stationery such as note books, manifold books, portfolios, etc.

2. Letterpress binding - making new books intended to be read from and includes

• fine binding,
• library binding,
• edition binding, and
• publisher's bindings.

3. Repair, restoration, and conservation of old used bindings.

A Book Gilder gilded book bindings with gold leaf

History

The earliest surviving European bookbinding is the St Cuthbert Gospel of about 700, in red goatskin, now in the British Library, whose decoration includes raised patterns and coloured tooled designs.

Notable Bookbinders

• Katharine Adams (1862-1952) Wiki

A woman binder who achieved acclaim. She grew up near William Morris' family and was friends with his daughters May and Jennie. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "The connection with the Morris family proved useful when she began binding professionally during the 1890s. After a short period of training with Sarah Prideaux (1853–1933) and T. J. Cobden-Sanderson (1840–1922) in London in 1897, she set up a workshop in Lechlade, where her first commission came from Janey Morris. In 1901 she established the Eadburgh Bindery in Broadway, Gloucestershire. Adams initially worked alone, but was later able to employ two women assistants, whom she herself trained. For several years during this period she taught binding to the nuns at Stanbrook Abbey, although she was never quite reconciled either to the restrictions imposed upon the nuns or to the practical difficulty of teaching through a grille. . . . She took first prize in bookbinding at the Oxford arts and crafts exhibition of 1898, and was soon receiving regular commissions from the engraver and typographer Emery Walker [of the Doves Press], St John Hornby [of the Ashendene Press], and the bibliophile Sydney Cockerell."

• Robert Barker binder to James I
• Thomas Brand.
• William Caxton

...is credited with both publishing the first English-language book and establishing the first printing press in England. Born around 1422 in Kent, Caxton went to London when he was sixteen years old. He was apprenticed to a prominent merchant. Caxton went on to Bruges, Flanders, where he became a prominent merchant in his own right. From 1462 to 1470, Caxton held the post of governor to the English Nation of Merchant Adventurers, representing his fellow merchants and acting as a diplomat for the king.

• T. J. Cobden-Sanderson (1840–1922) Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson WIKI
• Douglas Bennett Cockerell (1870-1945)

British bookbinders whose classic bookbinding manual “Bookbinding and the Care of Books” is still in print. Brother of Sydney Cockerell WIKI

• Sydney Morris Cockerell
• Jean Grolier de Servieres, Jean Grolier de Servières, viscount d'Aguisy (1489-90 – 22 October 1565) WIKI

...vicomte d'Aguisy, built a famous library of exquisite volumes and introduced a new appreciation for the book as object. Before the "prince of bibliophiles" was the namesake for the Grolier Club, he served as Treasurer General of France and ambassador to the Court of Rome. Though Grolier was born in Lyons in 1489 or 1490, his family hailed from Verona. His father, a gentleman of the court of Louis XII, introduced him to the French court early. Grolier quickly distinguished himself with his learning and understanding of finance. By 1534, Grolier found himself in Rome, handling delicate negotiations with Pope Clement VII. The two would become fast friends.

• Thomas Hollis
• Mrs. Annie MacDonald of Edinburgh (binding in 1897)
• Samuel Mearne (1624-1683) WIKI

Whether Samuel Mearne actually bound books himself is not certain, but his bindery introduced the cottage style, a distinctly English binding style that has lasted longer than any other. Born in 1624, Mearne completed his second apprenticeship with bookbinder Jeremy Arnold. He went on to work as a publisher, binder, and bookseller. Mearne had a Dutch bookbinder on his payroll. He took a keen interest in bookbinding, and some of the most elaborate Restoration bindings are attributed to him. He's come to be associated with the cottage style, named because its designs look like the gables of a cottage. The rectangular lines enclosing the design are broken into gable-like elements at the top, bottom, and sides. The spaces were sometimes filled in with French-style branches and sprays, or with roundelles and other embellishments more typical of English bindings. The cottage style is one of the few distinctly English binding styles. It remained popular with relatively little variation until the first quarter of the nineteenth century--the greatest longevity of any binding style. In 1678, Mearne's second son, Charles, joined him as a partner. By this time, Mearne had earned the post of Stationer and Bookseller to King Charles II. A leading member of the bookselling community, Mearne would also become Master of the Stationer's Company. By this time, it's unlikely that Mearne actually bound books himself anymore. But he passed down his tools, which were used by his successors well into the eighteenth century.

• William Morris, (1834-1896)
• Evelyn Hunter Nordhoff (b. ca. 1865 – d. November 2, 1898)

America's first female bookbinder and printmaker. Evelyn Hunter Nordhoff WIKI

• James Norton binder to James I
• Julian Notary,

...who worked first at Westminster, and afterwards in the City between the years 1498 and 1520.

• Roger Payne, (1739–1797.) WIKI

Roger Payne was born at Windsor in 1739, and after a short service with Pote, the Eton bookseller, came to London in 1766, and entered the employment of Thomas Osborne, the bookseller, in Gray's Inn. A few years later he set up in business for himself as a bookbinder, near Leicester Square. Here he was joined by his brother Thomas, who attended to the 'forwarding' part of the business, whilst Roger devoted himself wholly to the 'finishing.' His great artistic talents placed him easily at the head of all the binders of his day, and procured him a number of distinguished patrons, among whom were Earl Spencer, the Duke of Devonshire, Colonel Stanley, and the Rev. Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode. The brothers did not long continue their partnership, and on the departure of Thomas Payne, Roger took as a fellow-worker Richard Wier, whose wife was a clever mender and restorer of old books. The new partnership had one serious drawback, both Payne and Wier being addicted to strong drink; this led to frequent quarrels, and at last to separation. Payne died in Duke's Court, St. Martin's Lane, on 20 November 1797, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, at the expense of his friend Thomas Payne, the bookseller. To this friend, who was not a relative, he was indebted for his first start in business on his own account, and for his support during the last eight years of his life.

• Roger Powell OBE (17 May 1896 – 16 October 1990)

English bookbinder. WIKI

• Sarah Treverbian Prideaux (1853-1933)

- one of the first women to gain notice as a bookbinder. She began binding when she was 31, training in London under Zaehnsdorf and in Paris under Gruel, and worked independently for 20 years. The Maggs Bros. Catalogue of Bindings #966 says that Prideaux "was by far the best of the women binders of the period, . . . she wrote several books on the history of bookbinding, and [she] also taught the craft, one of her best students [being] Katharine Adams." Marianne Tidcombe, whose Women Bookbinders is an essential reference, says that Prideaux bindings "all have a restrained beauty about them that continues to appeal to book collectors. Anything pictorial or gimmicky would have been anathema to her, and she leaned instead towards clean, crisp floral motifs . . . , avoiding over-intricate tooling which hides the beauty of the leather." Adams says that Prideaux was a particularly "good judge of leather, using only skins of very high quality, for hers was a counsel of perfection in all things."

• Richard Pynson, Caxton's pupil
• Countess Eva Mannerheim Sparre (1870-1957),

...received a degree in wood sculpting and leatherwork from the Stockholm Technical School in 1891, and became the first person to teach leathercraft in Finland. With her husband, the Swedish artist Count Louis Sparre, she had a profound impact on applied art and design in Finland. One of the few Scandinavian binders to receive any attention in Tidcombe's "Women Bookbinders, 1880-1920," Sparre is described in that work as being "responsible for some very restrained and tasteful designs for modelled leather bindings." Tidcombe mentions three examples of her work--one in the Huntington Library and two others illustrated in Sunny Frykholm's article "Bookbinding in Sweden, Norway, and Finland," in "The Studio" (Winter Number 1899-1900, pp. 78-82).

• John Ratcliff (or Ratcliffe) of the seventeenth century

The first identifiable bookbinder in America, known for binding Eliot's Indian Bible in 1663. He came from London and worked as a bookbinder in Boston, Massachusetts for about twenty years, from approximately 1662–1682. WIKI

• Francis Sangorski (1875-1912) (1878-1943) Sangorski & Sutcliffe WIKI
• George Sutcliffe (1878-1943) Sangorski & Sutcliffe WIKI
• Frieda Thiersch (1889-1947)
• Joseph Zaehnsdorf (1816-1886) WIKI

Austrian bookbinder who worked throughout Europe before settling in England. His son, also named Joseph, wrote “The Art of Bookbinding.”

Sources, References and Further Reading

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookbinding
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Bookbinders
• http://www.waytebinding.co.uk/pr02.htm
• http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/explorefurther/subje...
• http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol2/pp201-203
• https://www.ilab.org/eng/documentation/1451-famous_figures_in_the_h...
• http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/20th-july-1895/22/the-histor...
• http://www.blaisebookbinding.co.uk/#/history-of-book-binding/456287...
• http://www.booktryst.com/2010/07/binding-women.html
• http://www.bookbindersmuseum.com/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felbrigge_Psalter
  
  

this project is in History Link