Bookbinding

Charles Tomlinson. Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts. 9 vols. London, 1852.  

This illustration from Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts shows a rolling press in operation at a bookbindery. The machine has a heavy iron mangle used to press flat sheets of printed matter before they are folded and sewn, resulting in a smoother paper and books that are about five-sixths the thickness of those produced by earlier methods. Before the rolling press, workmen hammered the sheets with a fourteen-pound beating hammer, a monotonous, strenuous, and time-consuming process. 

Illustrated here are six bookbinding procedures described and illustrated in Tomlinson’s Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts:  

• Folding  
• Sewing (using a sewing frame that had not changed significantly since the eighteenth century) 
• Applying a standing press (which had also not changed significantly since the eighteenth century) 
• Using a board-cutting machine 
• Using an embossing press 
• Using a gold blocking press 
  

Tomlinson’s fig. 174 shows an embossing press that must have been exceptionally heavy and powerful. 

Diderot & d'Alembert. Encyclopédie des Sciences. Paris, 1751–1772.

Facsimile.

Until the mid-1820s, bookbinding was largely performed as described and illustrated in this encyclopedia. The Encyclopédie includes six plates illustrating the bookbinding process and the few tools bookbinders used: a bookbinder’s sewing frame, used to sew the signatures of a book block; a bookbinder’s press; a hammer used to round the spine of a book; a simple press to stamp gold designs, such as coats of arms, onto the covers of books; and various hand tools. Papermaking and bookbinding were the main book-production trades that employed women, who were assigned tasks that did not require extensive physical force. 

Cicero. De officiis, de senectute et de amicitia. London, 1821.   

This Diamond Classics tiny pocket edition of Cicero bound in publisher’s cloth is one of the first books issued in publisher’s cloth by London publisher William Pickering. Pickering is credited with first introducing these bindings in the early nineteenth century, using cloth developed by the bookbinder Archibald Leighton. For centuries printers and booksellers bound some books in temporary wrappers or boards that were intended to be replaced by permanent leather bindings. Publisher’s cloth bindings were the first “permanent” publisher’s bindings that did not need to be replaced by fancier leather ones, and they thus represented a potential cost savings to buyers. Pinpointing the first issue of those bindings is difficult and has the topic of considerable debate by scholars.  

William Shakespeare. The Plays. London, 1825.  

9 volumes. 

William Pickering’s pocket-sized Diamond Classics edition of Shakespeare’s works was probably the first set of books ever offered for sale in publisher’s cloth. Whether a publisher’s binding was issued at the exact same time that an edition was first sold is difficult to know, as sometimes publishers stored books in sheets and had copies bound as needed while the edition was in print, or gave parts of editions to different binders, resulting in binding variants. While Pickering dated and advertised his books on certain dates, exactly when and how he had each copy bound must be inferred.  

Silver medal. 1827.

In 1827, six years after William Pickering and Archibald Leighton introduced cloth-edition bindings, London bookbinder William Burn received this Silver Vulcan Medal from the Society of Arts for his invention of the rolling press to round the spine of books—the first machine to mechanize a manual skill that was adopted into the bookbinding trade. In their evaluation, the Society of Arts observed that the rolling press did in one minute what had previously taken workmen twenty minutes with a beating hammer. 

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron. The Works of Lord Byron. London, 1832.

Archibald Leighton continued to experiment with cloth as a bookbinding material, developing in 1832 the first cloth that could take and retain impressed gilt decoration rapidly and in sufficient quantity to allow for gilt-stamped, cloth-edition bindings. Previously, the title design was stamped on a paper label, which was then affixed to the book’s spine. The two methods are visible on vols. 1 and 2 of The Works of Lord Byron, with vol. 1 sporting a traditional paper label and vol. 2 displaying a gilt decoration stamped directly onto the cloth.  

Marius Vachon. Les Arts et Les Industries du Papier en France 1871–1894. Paris, 1894.  

By end of the nineteenth century, industrial bookbinding in Paris was extensively mechanized. This image from historian and art critic Vachon’s book on French paper industries shows people operating machines to gild and print book covers at the bindery of the Librairies-Imprimeries Réunies, Paris.  

Marius Vachon. Les Arts et Les Industries du Papier en France 1871–1894. Paris, 1894.  

These women are operating staple sewing machines at the Maison Lenègre bookbindery. The machines used metal staples rather than thread to sew printed signatures. 

Marius Vachon. Les Arts et Les Industries du Papier en France 1871–1894. Paris, 1894.  

This illustration from Vachon’s book shows workers at the Maison Lenègre bookbindery. One man is operating a machine to cut paper, while others operate machines to print covers.  

Marius Vachon. Les Arts et Les Industries du Papier en France 1871–1894. Paris, 1894.   

The men are operating a machine at the Maison Lenègre bookbindery to print a cover in color. These may be some of the first bookbindery machines that were much larger than their human operators. 

L. Graham & Son. New Orleans, 1898.  

Far less scholarship exists on the history of mechanization of bookbinding than on the history of hand bookbinding. This little-known book describes the building and overall operations of L. Graham & Son, Printers and Bookbinders, a medium-sized printing and bookbinding company in nineteenth-century New Orleans. It contains excellent images of Graham’s equipment and binding facilities, as well as photographs of people using the machinery in their bindery. 

L. Graham & Son. New Orleans, 1898.  

Front portion of bindery, showing embossing machines 

L. Graham & Son. New Orleans, 1898.  

Rear portion of bindery, showing sewing machines 

The Holy Bible. Oxford, 30 June 1877.

As an example of progress in book production since the 15th century, for the Caxton Memorial Exhibition Oxford University Press undertook the printing and hand binding in bull leather of 100 copies of the Bible in only 12 consecutive hours on 30 June 1877.  This required 100 binders to bind books and create the slipcases. Today it is doubtful if 100 hand binders could be assembled for such a project and also doubtful if they could hand bind Bibles and make slipcases that rapidly.