BOOK IV. Chapter IV. Binding in France since Le Gascon. Reverting now to the state of the art of Binding in France, it may be said that from the days of Le Gas- Bookbinding. con, the favourite binder of the illustrious historian and booklover, De Thou, down to those of Thouvenin, the restorer of the art almost within the present generation, the names that stand very saliently out are but four or five, although the interval embraces two centuries. One of the best known, too, of these names, Du Seüil: (.... "In books not authors, curious is my Lord; To all their dated backs he turns you round; a recent writer regards as being that of a man "whose 1 P. de Malden, De la Reliure,(Bulletin du Bibliophile 1844), 1261. 62 Vol. II. BOOK IV. Chapter IV. simple. Their books are forwarded with great solidity. Bookbinding. A single broad fillet on the sides, and a graceful flowerornament amidst stars, on the back, are frequently all the decoration; although occasionally, as, for example, in the splendid 'Farmers-General' edition of the Contes de La Fontaine, we find De Rome vying with the lacework of Pâdeloup. Bozérian as described, poetically, by Lesné. The elder Bozérian may be described by one of his successors, who was both Binder and Poet: "Les amateurs, outrés de taut d'insouciance, Firent relier longtemps leurs livres hors de France, Et chez nous ce bel art retombait au néant Alors que s'établit le fameux Bozérian: Cet artiste amateur détruisit la folie De regarder l'ANGLAIS avec idolatrie. Eh quoi! se disait-il, exprimant ses regrets, Dibdin's attack on the French binders. The depreciatory observations in which Dibdin indulged, both on Bozérian and on Thouvenin himself, led to a little paper warfare, in which the assailant was by no means the victor. Lesné, the poet of Bookbinding, took up the cudgels for his brethren, and plied them, mainly by carrying the war into the enemy's country, with vigour. Of Bozérian, Dibdin had said:-"His or Lesné, La Reliure, Poème didactique en six chants (1820), 26. 2 Lesné, Lettre d'un Relieur Français à un Bibliographe Anglais (1822). DIBDIN'S ATTACK ON THE FRENCH BOOKBINDERS. ... 979 BOOK IV. Chapter IV. naments are too minute and too profuse; and moreover, occasionally very unskilfully worked; his joints Bookbinding. are neither carefully measured, nor do they play easily; and his linings are often gaudy to excess. ... His volumes open well" [the bad joints notwithstanding], “but are beaten too unmercifully. It is the reigning error of French binders. They think they can never beat a book sufficiently. They exercise a tyranny over the leaves 1 in France. as bad as that of Eastern despots over their prostrate Bookbinding slaves." And of Thouvenin: "The folio Psalter of 1502 (I think), in the Royal Library is considered to be the ne plus ultra of modern book-binding at Paris; and, if I mistake not, Thouvenin is the artist in whose charcoal furnace, the tools which produced this échantillon were heated. I have no hesitation in saying that, considered as an extraordinary specimen of art, it is a failure. The ornaments are common place; the lining is decidedly bad; and there is a clumsiness of finish throughout the whole. The head-bands-as indeed are those of Bozérian-are clumsily managed: and I may say that it exhibits a manifest inferiority even to the productions of Mackinlay, Hering, Clarke and Fairbairn." Passing silently over the personalities, there are in M. Lesné's Reply some professional criticisms, which are as well worth consideration now, as they were when first published. He more particularly condemns our loose backs with false bands; our flat backs, with no proper support or strength; and most of all our weakness for crowded and excessive ornament. All 1 Dibdin, Bibliographical Tour in France, etc., ii, 246. 2 Ibid., ii, 247. BOOK IV. Chapter IV. Jury of Class XVII on the Binding exhibited in 1851. these faults, he says, have been imported into France Bookbinding. out of mere Anglomania. Be this as it may, it must in candour be owned that they are faults which were almost unknown in the better days of the Art; and that Lesné's allegations of 1822 were substantially endorsed by the Jury of the Great Exhibition in 1851 when they Report of the Wrote: "It is to be deplored that appearance should be so often preferred to reality, and that instead of the solidity which our Fathers sought before every thing. the inconstancy of our age should, by a contrary excess. prefer changeableness and variety." And again:— "After having attentively observed the amount of elaborate work which is bestowed on most of the productions exhibited by the Bookbinders of the United Kingdom, the Jury cannot disguise the fact that there is a general want of good designs; and they beg to remark that more attention should be paid to a subject which impresses a special character on the products of a country. The attempts at emblematic binding are generally not very successful; but the imitation of the old English style of bindings are a nearer approach to simple, useful and good work." Nor can such an authorative statement as this, little flattering as it is to our national vanity, excite much surprise, when we remember how recent have been in England any really efficient measures for the artistic education of workmen, and how predominantly the History of Bookbinding has been with us a history of mechanical contrivances to abridge labour and cheapen 1 Exhibition of Industry of all Nations,-Jury Reports, 424. EFFECTS OF MACHINERY ON BOOKBINDING. 981 BOOK IV. Chapter IV. production; excellent objects in their right place and subordination, but in that only. This rapid conversion Bookbinding. of an art into a manufacture has been well described by the Jury of 1851, in a passage which traces in few words the sequence of the leading mechanical inventions by which it has been effected. "Bookbinding," says the Jury, "may be said to have become a manufacturing business. Books handsomely bound, gilt, lettered, embossed, and otherwise ornamented, no longer depend upon individual skill; but are produced, with extraordinary rapidity by the aid of machinery. Mr. Burn, of Hatton Garden, first introduced rolling machines to supersede hammering; the iron printing presses of Hopkinson and others were altered to form arming-presses, by which block-gilding, blind tooling and embossing can be effected with accuracy and rapidity. Leather covers, embossed in elaborate and beautiful patterns, by means of powerful flypresses, were introduced by M. Thouvenin in Paris, about twenty-five years ago, and almost simultaneously in this country by Mssrs. Remnant and Co., and Mr. De La Rue. .... Embossed calico was also introduced about the same period by Mr. De La Rue; hydraulic presses, instead of the old wooden screw presses; Wilson's cutting machines which supersede the old plough; the cuttingtables with shears invented by Mr. Warren De La Rue, and now applied to squaring and cutting millboards for bookcovers; all these means and contrivances, indispensable to large establishments, prove that machinery is one of the elements necessary to enable a binder on a large scale to carry on that business successfully." Effects of Machinery on the Art of Bookbinding.' |