Part 3

In concluding this sketch of Bookbinding in England as it appears to-day, we must not omit to speak of the entrance recently effected by women in many of the handicrafts, and notably in the one under consideration. Quite a number are now trying to make a livelihood out of bookbinding; and possibly, therefore, a few words less of criticism than of counsel may not come amiss. It may be said that there are certain conditions absolutely necessary for successful achievement, quite apart from financial gain, which is another matter. The first of these is a workshop training, which, though impossible some years ago, is now no longer so within certain limits; that is to say, there are one or two binders with small workshops who undertake to give women systematic teaching for a limited time. In a workshop they will see a variety of work that they will miss if taught privately, and they will learn the habit of rapid and dexterous manipulation of tools and materials without which it is impossible to work quickly enough for a profitable return upon the outlay. A second most necessary qualification is that they should have the physique for standing and working at a bench during the hours of an ordinary working day. For binding is not like other less specialized crafts that can be taken up at odd hours and laid aside with equal facility, but needs concentration of mind as well as sureness of hand. A third element in the desirable equipment is a certain faculty of imagination controlled by right feeling or good taste, so that the results of workmanship have the note of individuality without eccentricity. In art as in life, personality is the one thing needful, and we may fairly look to women to show the realization of it that can hardly be expected from those working in the stereotyped grooves of production.

And what is to be said of binding as a means of livelihood? Experience has shown that properly trained women can do as good binding as men, though not upon large and heavy work, and if they do it well enough some of them can earn a fair wage, while if they fail to reach a high standard they had better for all practical purposes let it alone. But to hold out any inducement to the woman who really needs bread-and-butter to take up binding as a lucrative employment, as is done in some quarters, should be characterized with the severity it deserves. Many women need but an addition to their income, and to such, if they are willing to incur the expense of training and plant, and if they realize the experimental nature of the undertaking, binding may be recommended as a sufficiently pleasant occupation. Whether financial success comes, however, or not, must depend upon the amount of work turned out, on the originality and finish with which it is executed, and last, but not least in importance, on the finding of a market. Booksellers are now so overstocked with so-called artistic bindings of moderate merit, and it may also be said of moderate price, that they are not eager to accept those of average quality at the more than average price that many women expect their work to command. A market can always be found for the best of everything; but as far as bindings are concerned it is certainly at present overstocked with the second best, and attention may well be directed to other branches of decorative work. There are more than enough half-trained workers, both male and female; and it would be a most undesirable result of what in itself is so eminently desirable—the opening of the artistic crafts to women—if there were to be a great deal of inferior work put into circulation obviously from the hands of those who have never left the amateur stage. Women make a mistake, too, in specializing in the production of decorated bindings. It is no doubt a right principle to take the everyday things of life and decorate them rather than invent useless ones for the purpose. It has, however, this disadvantage, that it has now become almost impossible to get any of these homely things made with the severe simplicity of mere purposefulness. If one does not want the useless things, at least one need not buy them; but it seems hard that the necessary ones should become the _corpora vile_ on which the professed decorator exercises his too frequently disordered imagination. One is unfortunately as little likely nowadays to find a plain pepper-pot as one is to find a bound book on which there is not some flower sprawling over its cover in a meaningless attempt to be Japanese in sentiment. We want to get rid of the affectation of contorted pattern and have more of the plain things of life plainly made. As far as bindings are concerned, in addition to this much-desired simplicity, there is, as has been said above, far more important and useful work to be done than pattern making, in the repairing and preserving of old books and records. An instance of this may be seen at the present moment in an extensive matter undertaken by Mr. Cockerell for the Middlesex County Council. A large number of their ancient Sessions Books, many of them crumbling to pieces, are being put in a condition for reference, the whole business of mending being done by women under the direction formerly of Miss Wilkinson and now of Miss M‘Ewan both pupils of Mr. Cockerell. Again, many more women might adventure starting a business in the country or in a provincial town. In America there is hardly a centre where there is any interest shown in books which has not a woman binder who has probably been trained by Mr. Cobden-Sanderson. We are glad to notice that Miss Adams has a bindery at Broadway, that Miss Paget is at Farnham doing good honest work of a comparatively simple nature, and that Miss Philpot has established herself at Cambridge. Space forbids more than a few illustrations from the work of women binders, numerous as they now are. Miss MacColl’s books have for some time excited interest both on account of the character of her brother’s designs and her manner of executing them by means of a small wheel, which is an attempt to overcome the restrictions of the finisher’s ordinary methods. Miss Nathan, Miss Pattinson and Miss Stebbing are all doing well-considered and tasteful work on sound principles. Of those at work in Scotland we need only mention the names of Miss Jessie King, Miss McClure and Miss Jane F. Hamilton, Miss Alice Gairdner and Miss Agnes Watson of Glasgow, as their work has recently been specially dealt with in a paper by Mr. Lewis F. Day.

In conclusion, it is necessary to keep in mind that binding is but one of the sub-crafts that contribute to the production of books. Of late each of these has pursued its own often faulty ideals regardless of its relationship to the other contributory crafts. The paper-maker, the printer and the binder would be more likely to work intelligently if they had some mutual knowledge of each other’s needs and limitations. The habit has been growing for some time of looking on the binding of a book as the most important thing in connexion with it. But the binder of the future, if his work is to be an effective contribution to decorative art, must look on the book itself as the unit of interest, the thought, embodied in typography and illustration, constituting a whole to which in the decorated cover he adds, not an essential part, but as it were the crown or coping-stone.

MODERN FRENCH BINDING

I

In the spring of 1902 there took place in Paris the first of the exhibitions to which the new Galliera Museum is henceforth to be devoted. This Gallery, still unknown to a considerable number of English visitors, was built by Ginain in the style of the French Renaissance, and is all that a small museum should be. Its history is briefly as follows. In 1878, the Duchesse de Galliera presented to the City of Paris a plot of ground situated in the Rue Pierre-Charron by the Trocadero avenue, and undertook to erect upon it a suitable building in which to house the collection of works of art that she proposed leaving to the nation. Before, however, it was finished, and in consequence of the political events that resulted in the expulsion of the heads of princely houses from France, the Duchess had made a will in which she left her pictures to her native town of Genoa, only making provision for the completion of the Gallery. She died in 1888, and soon afterwards Paris found herself in possession of this fine museum, surrounded with gardens, and admirably appointed in the architectural detail so well understood by the French, but empty of all the treasures it was to have housed. What was to become of it? The municipal council decided that it should be devoted to industrial art, forming a sort of supplement to the Carnavalet Museum, and the necessary furnishing was undertaken with a view to that end. It was formally opened in 1895, but for five years after that remained practically empty, though purchases were made from successive Salons of different kinds of decorative art and disposed among the vacant rooms to form a nucleus for future acquisitions. In 1900 the Council, after much deliberation, decided that the museum should be devoted to periodical industrial exhibitions, and the first one, of a miscellaneous character, took place in the following year. Its distinctive feature consisted in what was an entirely new departure for France, namely, that every craftsman signed his work instead of being represented only in the name of the firm which employed him. This idea, to which we have now long been accustomed through the efforts of the Arts and Crafts Society, was a very novel one for our neighbours, and is to be adopted henceforth in all the Galliera exhibitions. The initiative met with such undoubted success that the Germans proceeded at once to start a museum at Mulhouse on similar lines. The organizing jury of the Council, which includes the foremost men of letters, artists and critics, next decided that the yearly exhibitions should each be devoted to a special branch of decorative art. The first of these was inaugurated in May 1892, in an admirably planned show of modern bindings comprising the latest developments, and, it must be added, eccentricities of ornamental book covers. The number sent in necessitated the largest gallery being set aside for their reception, and was a testimony to the confidence felt by the binders that merit would be the sole criterion. And indeed, though much interesting work was rejected, not only were the well-known artists well represented, such as Michel, Mercier, Gruel, Ruban, Canape, Lortic, Carayon, etc., but room was found for the curious vellum covers of Pierre Roche and the incised and modelled leather of Lepère with whom Michel and others so happily collaborate. The impression made upon the visitor was at once one of careful selection and admirable disposition. In contrast to the wretched instalment offered by the great Exhibition of 1900, the work of every binder was seen to the best advantage, the eye was not fatigued by too many show-cases, and the harmony of surroundings left nothing to be desired. The display of works of art is in itself a study, and we could undoubtedly learn much from the French in the excellent arrangement of their galleries. But what a strange transition from that great room in the Bibliothèque Nationale, where rest at last the classic specimens of work that may without exaggeration be included among the fine arts, to this most modern of collections! When in the Bibliothèque Nationale we are reminded of that exquisite sonnet of Hérédia—

VÉLIN DORÉ

Vieux maître relieur, l’or que tu ciselas Au dos du livre et dans l’épaisseur de la tranche N’a plus, malgré les fers poussés d’une main franche La rutilante ardeur de ses premiers éclats.

Les chiffres enlacés que liait l’entrelacs S’effacent chaque jour de la peau fine et blanche; A peine si mes yeux peuvent suivre la branche De lierre que tu fis serpenter sur les plats.

Mais cet ivoire souple et presque diaphane, Marguerite, Marie, ou peut-être Diane, De leurs doigts amoureux l’ont jadis caressé;

Et ce vélin pâli que dora Clovis Éve Évoque, je ne sais par quel charme passé, L’âme de leur parfum et l’ombre de leur rêve.

Here in the Galliera we realize how complete is the revolution now finally effected by a people who clung long and faithfully to the traditions of a style made famous by Grolier and by the Eves, Le Gascon and Derôme. All through the nineteenth century these traditions were adhered to, carried out by Thouvenin, Simier and Capé, by Chambolle, Duru, Trautz and Cuzin, the inspired copyists of the great masters. These looked on originality as the most dangerous of innovations and a sort of disloyalty to the precedents handed down to them across the ages. Nevertheless the impending change was slowly and surely making way, fostered by Lortic and Marius Michel, the latter through his writings as well as in his work. Henri Marius Michel followed in his father’s steps: his essay on _L’ornamentation des reliures modernes_ showed clearly the direction taken by the modern school; while the sumptuous book, _La reliure du XIX siècle_, by Henri Béraldi, who is both a patron and collector of distinction, may be said to have given final expression to the movement as a whole. Bookbinding, in common with larger subjects, has its bibliography. A glance over the names of the books that relate to it published during the last half-century shows well enough how interest has been displaced from the historic schools to those which have initiated entirely new forms of decoration as applied to book covers. If, then, we are struck by the contrast between past and present as regards the nature of this application of art to bindings, we are equally impressed by the contrast between the position of the binder then and now. It is no wonder that the small world of binders and their patrons in Paris were proud of the position of honour assigned to their craft in 1902. They inaugurated a series of exhibitions, which is to include ivories, lace, jewellery, furniture—every art, in fact, to which there attaches the personality that can only come from having at some time had as its exponents ‘the masters of those who know.’ Even so late as 1870 the name of Trautz was unknown, not only to the ordinary public, but to such collectors as Eugène Paillet and Quentin Bauchart, though he had been producing admirable work for thirty years. In 1878 he was decorated with the Legion of Honour, the first time that any such distinction had been offered to a binder. It was only after his retirement and subsequent return to business at the age of sixty that his fame grew till it culminated in a sort of worship that is inconceivable outside of France. Nowadays the many means of publicity would render such a state of things quite impossible. It is an age in which every one longs to see himself reflected in print or show-case; and if the workman in any line does not himself take measures for bringing his efforts to the light, there is a class whose chief occupation it is to be the discoverers of hidden talent, and to act as middlemen between the producer and the public. In Paris, binders have now a status that is looked upon with surprise and envy in England. They are still, it is true, mostly congregated on the left bank of the Seine, the quarter which was formerly in the parish of Saint-André-des-Arts, and where their guild had its church of that name, now no longer in existence. Up to five-and-twenty years ago there was hardly one that lived elsewhere, and even now it is the exception to find a binder in the more fashionable quarter. One has to climb high to reach their ateliers, invariably of very modest dimensions and where but few workmen are employed. The extensive businesses that we know in London hardly exist in Paris, and M. Gruel’s is probably the only one employing a large number of hands. For the most part two or three ‘forwarders’ and the same number of ‘finishers’ will suffice for the yearly output of a single workshop. But to these ateliers go personally the great collectors who are wealthy patrons, to discuss in detail different points of design and technique with a connoisseurship that is reserved with us for painting or sculpture. To the unstinted help and intelligent appreciation afforded by such a class of amateurs is undoubtedly due the superior position of the artistic crafts in France. Many of the bindings in the Galliera were achieved at a cost of two thousand francs, and others for three and even four thousand. There are two papers entirely devoted to the craft—_La Reliure_, which is the organ of the Chambre Syndicale, an association of master binders founded by M. Gruel; and _Le Relieur_, organ of the Chambre Syndicale Ouvrière, which is the corresponding association for workmen. Every year binders can exhibit at each of the rival Salons, at the Société des Artistes Français and the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and the Galliera Exhibition is but the latest and most effective of the special exhibitions organized from time to time for the exclusive display of their work. There is a desire to make such exhibitions recurrent every ten years, so as to get a periodic outlook on the art as a whole; but it is unlikely that the next few decades will show such marked characteristics of difference as may be seen by comparison of this collection with that even of 1892 organized by the Cercle de la Librairie. It may, in fact, be suggested that the evolution—or revolution, according to the point of view taken—now at its height, will probably produce a reaction towards that greater sobriety of treatment which distinguished the best work of the past. There are, indeed, already signs that the future of binding will not lie in that emancipation from all restrictions of form and material which would seem to be the ideal of some. Precisely what that future will be rests largely, no doubt, with the collectors, who are, as has been indicated, a powerful body in France, largely on the increase. It is they who, like MM. Béraldi, Spencer, Bordes, Villebœuf, Roger, Marx, Claude Lafontaine, Baron de Claye, Louis Barthou, and many others, not only furnish binders with the means of giving full play to their imagination, but often devote their pens with enthusiasm to introducing new efforts to the numerous body of amateurs who look to them for guidance in matters of taste and are ready enough to follow their initiative.

The modern movement in binding may be said to have sprung out of the new form of book-collecting which began about 1870. Up to that time the book lover had confined himself entirely to eighteenth-century literature. For forty or fifty years there had been a mad rush in the salerooms for books of that period, which were then confided to Thouvenin, Simier, or Trautz, who had exercised their skill in marvellous imitations of the past, with an execution often more technically perfect than the originals. There came a time, however, when such works were exhausted—already stored away, that is to say, on the shelves of collectors, the few that occasionally appeared on the market being only to be had at prohibitive prices. Book-buyers were thus faced with the problem of what was to be their next move. Obviously to create a new taste in books and establish a fresh motive for collecting was a necessity, and a few pioneers decided to set the fashion in illustrated books of the nineteenth century. Léon Conquet, whose reputation as a publisher is associated with the production of many fine works, at once rose to the occasion, and made a name first with his editions of the romantics of the nineteenth century, and then with original editions of contemporary authors. Clients for whom the old tastes had become too rare and costly an indulgence were thus provided with the means of gratifying a new enthusiasm.

In 1874 an association sprang up of about fifty-five collectors who called themselves ‘Les amis des livres,’ from which sprang the new departure which has had far-reaching results in book production. The members determined that henceforth, instead of reprints from the past, there should be books specially illustrated and specially produced in small editions for the society, thus reviving the traditions of the days of Grolier and De Thou, when book collectors were also book makers in the best sense of the word. Authors and artists were to collaborate with printers and publishers to produce the perfect work. In this way came into existence _Eugénie Grandet_ with the drawings of Dagnan engraved by Le Rat, _Monsieur, Madame et Bébé_, illustrated by Edmond Morin and many another, to which Meissonier, Vierge and Lepère devoted their best efforts. Illustrated books have always presented a special attraction for our neighbours, and this new stimulus gave the most surprising results. Out of it arose, too, all the excessive preoccupation with ‘states,’ ‘papier de chine,’ ‘papier de japon,’ and the like which has been carried to a ridiculous extent. The cult of rarity in all such matters surely reached its highest point when single copies were specially illustrated for individual collectors, such as the _Fleurs du Mal_, which Paul Gallimond had ornamented with marginal notes by Rodin, and _Les Trois Mousquetaires_ with water-colour sketches by Maurice Leloir. The original drawings for _Notre Dame de Paris_ by Luc Olivier Merson were bought for 20,000 francs in the open market, while those for _Les Trois Mousquetaires_ and _Manon Lescaut_ by Maurice Leloir fetched the extravagant price of 60,000 francs apiece. These facts are interesting as showing how a small number of genuine book lovers and collectors can constitute a real power, and so far control the character of the book market that they create a new taste which will be recorded in history as the fashion of the age in which they lived. The success of the ‘Société des amis des livres’ and the response of the editors such as Conquet, Quantin, Testaud, and others, to their initiation, gave such encouragement to amateurs that two new clubs were soon formed, ‘Les amis des livres de Lyon’ and ‘Les bibliophiles contemporains.’ The last was founded by Octave Uzanne with a membership of 160, and ceased to exist only to be re-established as the ‘Société des cent bibliophiles,’ presided over by M. Eugène Roderigues. Besides all these associations there grew up a class of literature entirely devoted to the instruction of the amateur and the development of his taste in all matters relating to books and their bindings. The earlier literature of binding had been devoted to reproductions of fine specimens from historic collections, but now there appeared in profusion such books as _L’art d’aimer les livres et de les connaître_, _Connaissances nécessaires à un bibliophile_, _Les livres modernes qu’il convient d’acquérir_, _De la reliure, examples à imiter ou à rejeter_, not to mention monthly reviews such as _Le Livre Moderne_, _L’Art et l’Idée_, _Le Livre et l’Image_, and the like.