Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/690

 672 of modern binding, which, in its essence is the union at the back of the folded sheets, which together constitute the folded book, or, as I might say, despite the latent contradiction, the folded volume.

Throughout the long period which has elapsed since the invention of the folded sheet—it is said to have been invented in the third century before Christ—binding must have undergone many and important changes. But of these changes few records remain. Speaking generally of the binding of the middle and later ages, we may say that at each successive epoch the form of the binding adapted itself to the state of literature at the time. When books were few and large and stationary, the binding was correspondingly large and bossy and heavy; and when books became numerous and lighter and portable, the binding adapted itself to the new conditions, and, dropping the oak boards, the brass fittings, clasps, bosses, and chains, became itself light and portable and beautiful. And thus wood and silk, and velvet and leather, iron and brass, and silver and gold, and precious stones, were all used by the artificers of the middle and earlier ages in the protection and embellishment of the world's written wealth. The invention of printing, however, and the multiplication of books, gave the victory to leather and to gold tooling, and with the invention of printing, binding passed into its modern phase, and became ultimately a craft apart, the craft of the bookbinder.

To the renown of bookbinding many countries and cities and patrons have contributed, as well as the artists and craftsmen whose work it has been. Singularly enough, the names of very few bookbinders are known, but it is well known that to Grolier and to France is mainly due the gold tooling which is still the chief means of making the bound book beautiful. This tooling, of obscure origin, was practiced first in Europe in Italy, but was soon after introduced into France by Grolier, and the French schools of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are still the great schools of design in that decorative method.

Deserving of mention or of allusion in this connection, even in the shortest account of bookbinding, are the innumerable crafts—crafts for the production of materials and crafts for the production of tools—upon which the binder's own craft depends. For this collaboration of crafts is a fact of capital importance and should always be borne in mind, that the solidarity of all industries may be understood and the dignity of each be appreciated.

It is to be regretted, however, that at this moment the craftsmen immediately concerned in making a book, the paper-maker, the printer, and the binder, are not in possession of ideas bearing and operative upon the book as a whole, and controlling their