Part 4

Grolier took the best books he could find, and put them into the best bindings he could find, and the motto of the collectors of to-day was henceforth to be, as M. Béraldi says in the work previously mentioned, ‘le livre de son temps dans la reliure originale de son temps.’ Thus out of the new bibliomania grew naturally the reaction in binding with which we are now dealing, and the latest expression of which was seen in the Galliera Museum. These books of fine illustrations must have an appropriate decoration; nothing will do that has served its turn elsewhere, and every amateur stipulates that his binding shall be unique. ‘Doublures,’ formerly the exception, are now the rule; ‘tools’ are cut freely for fresh designs, and expense increases with the initiative demanded of the binder, till there seems no limit to what will be paid by the enthusiast. With the craving for novelty there naturally arises the problem, so difficult of solution, concerning the limitations of material and how far audacity may be risked in decoration without extravagance or eccentricity. Cuzin, at the height of his reputation in 1885, was possibly the first to leave the grooves of tradition and to create a style that he considered appropriate to the books of the time. It consisted for the most part on the outer covers of what the French call _jeu de filets_, or line patterns which are capable of much diversity, while wreaths of flowers inside took the place of the lace patterns that had hitherto formed the ornament of ‘doublures.’ He also adopted emblematic designs, but these were exceedingly moderate in their symbolism. Marius Michel, too, devoted himself to the research for fresh motives of decoration. In 1889, when eighteen years of age, he had gone into Gruel’s atelier and rapidly became a gilder of consummate taste and skill. Ten years later he set up for himself as a finisher, working for Duru, Capé, Chambolle, Cuzin and other binders. For the next twenty years or more his fine talent was devoted to the reproduction of bindings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to perfect copies of Grolier, Le Gascon and others put upon the books of that time, which were still to be bought freely and at moderate price. Some of his best work is to be seen now in the library at Chantilly; for the late Duc d’Aumale during his exile intrusted large numbers of books to Capé, always accompanied with detailed instructions, and it is these which constitute a large part of the elder Marius Michel’s title to fame.

II

In 1866 Henri Marius Michel, though only twenty years of age, had taken an important position in the business, maintaining the traditions of his father with equal zest and talent; and ten years later the atelier became one for binding in all its branches, a change which enabled Henri to develop his instincts for originality, the firstfruits of which were seen in the incised and modelled leather covers exhibited by him at L’Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs in 1881. But it was the days of the Trautz mania; and no collector would hear of any binder but Trautz. All the old books must be broken up to be recovered by him, and even bindings by Bozérian were destroyed to be replaced by those of Trautz. Notwithstanding his enormous output, the workshop was filled with books which he kept years without touching, and prices continued to increase until the Lacarelle sale in 1888, when there were signs of a change. In one auction-room there were 420 Trautz bindings, in another 380; in the library of James de Rothschild there were 2800 items, of which 1400 were in nineteenth-century binding, a thousand of these latter being bound by Trautz. But time brings its revenges; the place of Trautz is possibly now as much below his deserts as it was then above, while Henri Marius Michel, whose gifts of invention were long ignored as revolutionary, is now at the height of his reputation. M. Béraldi calls him the finest binder since the Renaissance, and there are those who say that the idolatry of Trautz has given place to another and no less extravagant form of hero worship.

Unceasingly occupied with decoration, he gave up the practice of gilding with his own hand, but has continued to execute the Cuir Ciselé, which is one of the styles in which he first achieved success and in which he is undoubtedly past master. Another style that has been associated with his name since 1885 is that known as _le flore stylisé_, in which flower motives are very slightly conventionalized, but with a certain individuality that makes his work unmistakable, notwithstanding the number of his imitators. Modern French designs of this type are not nearly enough conventionalized for our English taste, where a frankly realistic treatment of natural growths has always been considered unsound.

With the death of Trautz and the rise of the new book-collecting had come the moment for a revolution in binding, and Henri Marius Michel was quickly followed by others. He had, in fact, set the ball rolling, and broken with the long-kept traditions of symmetry, only to let loose a flood of eccentric work for which there was little to be said, and which often had not even the saving grace of technique. He at once became reactionary, and there was a period during which he returned to repeated patterns, simple line borders and the ordinary corner and centre ornaments, rendered with faultless execution. But Marius might turn reactionary for a time; the craze for _l’art nouveau_, as it was termed, was not to be lightly checked. Everything was now pressed into the service for the mere sake of novelty—leather, wood-carving, bronzes, ivories, enamels, miniatures, all found a place until a binding looked like any but what it should be, namely, a thing to be pleasant in the hand and intended to protect a book, without needing protection for itself. Curiosity shops were ransacked for silks and satins as board-linings. Japan yielded its papers and its embossed leathers, flowers of exotic growth lent strange forms to design, and symbolism became rampant. For a time, indeed, emblematic bindings were accepted as the note of the new style which was to mark the century, and in the hands of the indifferent artist became a real terror. There is obviously no such thing as ‘new art’—there is simply art or there is not, and there can be no real art without good craftsmanship. Under pretext of inventing a style that was to belong to the century, all that was done was to perpetuate grotesqueness instead of originality and a burlesque of ideas in their application to binding.

Meanwhile discussion as to the limitations of material naturally became faster and more furious, while the literature on the subject grew apace. In 1896 a controversy arose between Gruel and Michel, the former being supported by Bosquet, a binder holding an important position in the library of Messrs. Hachette and a frequent writer on his craft both in its historical and technical aspects. We, for whom the artistic crafts occupy a very subordinate position, can hardly imagine the heat of discussion that rages round a subject like this in France. The combatants at once range themselves on opposite sides, and the weapons used are all the resources of a language pre-eminently suited to satire and ridicule, but which somehow seem an armoury out of place on so restricted a battlefield. The Frenchman, however, is never so happy himself, nor, may we say, so entertaining to his neighbours, as when his tongue and his pen are giving effect to the ready wit that seems always at his service.

M. Gruel, whose efforts were directed towards stemming the tide of eccentricity associated with _l’art nouveau_, pointed out the impossibility that a new style should spring up on demand, and recommended a return to the study of past models and a gradual transformation of these into fresh departures. M. Michel replied that a firm break with tradition was necessary in order to avoid the constant repetition of the past and the mixture of styles which had long been the only resource of the ineffective designer. It was necessary, he said, either to return to nature or to seek inspiration from other arts besides binding. So the excitement grew, aided that same year by an exhibition in the Champ de Mars in which bindings from the school of Nancy, under the direction of Wiener, achieved a notoriety which only fanned the flame. These bindings soon got the nickname of _reliures d’affiche_, and painting was the art from which they derived their inspiration. The book was now looked on as a canvas on which to depict in different-coloured moroccos various scenes from life or nature. In some cases the composition was not even contained on one panel, but strayed over the back to finish on the under cover. The symbolist school with its picture binding has had a considerable vogue, though not in the extreme of violent reproduction of the Nancy school. Michel was himself influenced by it, and both he and Meunier were represented in this same exhibition with subjects in relief and allegorical representations in mosaic. The next development was the sculpture binding, which Michel distinctly furthered by suggesting to Lepère that he should model a cover for the solitary copy on Japan paper of _Paysages Parisiens_, which he had not only illustrated, but the drawings for which he had also engraved on wood and on copper. Since that time the modelled leather work of Lepère has taken a permanent place among book covers of the day; it is masterly in conception and execution, but would be as fine and more appropriate in a panel framed on a wall than on a binding. The art of the leather worker is one, whether applied to the coffer, the blotter, or the book—it is but the shape and the purpose that defines the appropriateness or inappropriateness of any particular treatment. Marius and Lepère represent the highest point attained by _le cuir incisé_. Artists of their attainments are rare, and it is only such artists who can be tolerated in deviations from the normal and whose inventions can in any sense be held to justify the result. Most collectors content themselves with a specimen or two in their libraries of the sculptured or symbolic or bejewelled binding, be it ever so curious, and turn with satisfaction to the more ordered ways of some modification or another of past traditions.

To turn now from this brief account of the recent developments of French binding to the Galliera exhibition.

The books shown by M. Léon Gruel, whom his son Paul now most ably seconds, were, as may be supposed, of the highest importance. The house is one of the oldest in Paris, having been established in 1811 by Deforge, by whom M. Gruel’s father was employed. M. Léon Gruel is an enthusiast who has all the antiquarian as well as the practical knowledge of binding at his fingers’ ends. He has a fine collection of old bindings and all sorts of documents relating to them, and some of these he used for his important publication in 1887, _Manuel historique et bibliographique de l’amateur de reliures_, a second instalment of which appeared in 1904. The characteristic of the business has always been the production of fine editions of liturgies and books of a devotional character, which made it famous long ago, and the bindings of which have always been specially designed and carried out under the direction of M. Gruel. It would have been natural enough had he been content with the great commercial success attained by the house, due to the industry and business qualities of the direction of successive members of his family. But instead of that, it has been his ambition to show that he could with equal success follow every turn taken by the art in the various directions that its recent evolution has demanded. The styles associated with the names of Grolier, the Eves, and le Gascon, are reproduced for those clients who demand them, while the more modern mosaic work, blind-tooled or with gold, is invented and executed with equal facility. One style revived from the past, that of _le cuir incisé_, he has made especially his own, and he treats it in an entirely different manner to that of Marius. The difference in procedure is briefly this: the incised leather of Marius is not one with the binding, but is a thick piece of calf, worked first by cutting and modelling, and then introduced as a panel sunk into the cover. In Gruel’s method the cover is the unit on which the design is modelled while damp, then coloured, and finally hardened. To succeed in this technique needs great delicacy of handling and a constant practice in its methods. It gives plenty of scope for emblematic treatment, which, in the hands of Rossigneux, who designed much of this work in former days for Gruel, was of great artistic merit: at the present time it is executed mainly by a son of M. Bosquet, already spoken of as an important writer on the critical and technical aspects of what is also his own craft. Rossigneux was an architect and designer of surprising talent, who did not hesitate to learn the technicalities of binding that he might devote himself to the decoration of book covers, not only in leather but in carved wood, for which he was especially famous. M. Léon Gruel is the master of a large workshop to which his men are proud to belong. As President of the Chambre Syndicate he has rendered important services, freely acknowledged, in an insistence on sound teaching and a wise encouragement of the coming generation of binders. The variety of his achievement is a constant surprise even to those who know his versatility, for at each successive exhibition he seems able to add fresh laurels to those which have always surrounded the name of his house.

Émile Mercier has the reputation of being the finest gilder in Paris—_l’artiste impeccable_, as his fellows call him—and he is perhaps the one man in whom they and the public recognize the chief exponent of the best traditions without being in any sense a servile imitator of the past. His individuality is a sympathetic one to all, and even in that little world of keen opposition and personal jealousy he cannot count a single enemy. He took over the atelier of Cuzin in 1890, at the age of thirty-six, on the death of his chief, with whom his relations had long been of the happiest kind, and for whose clients he had executed all the fine designs associated with the name of Cuzin. There is an immense difference in the mere technique of ‘tooling,’ or gilding as it is always called abroad—a difference almost impossible to put into words, but which is none the less visible to the eye for such distinctions. No French gilding could possibly be mistaken for English, and the reverse is also true. But even among French gilders, where the method prevails of laborious and patient but absolutely certain reworking of the tools in impressions previously made, Mercier stands out as pre-eminent. His work has a vigour and sureness of handling, his gilding a brilliancy and solidity as well as elegance of appearance that are beyond criticism. Though he himself works as hard as ever, he has already brought up in his workshop several young finishers of great merit, among whom Mayloender is mentioned as already of fine performance as well as of future promise. Content to quietly excel, Mercier has raised no opposition by any manifesto, and his position of first rank is accepted by all without hesitation as to its justice.

Pétrus Ruban, born at Villefranche in 1851, seemed for some time undecided as to whether he should join the ranks of the traditional or the revolutionary binders. He was at first obviously inspired by the newer decorative attempts of Henri Marius Michel, but has recently left the circle of innovators for the more restricted ranks of the _relieurs-doreurs_, of whom Mercier is the head. Nevertheless M. Ruban’s power of invention has enabled him to produce some remarkably fine ‘blind-tooled’ mosaics, in which striking effects of colour have been managed without a sacrifice of taste. The finish of his craftsmanship is undoubted: no one has finer mastery over tools and leather, and a faultless treatment of exquisite material distinguishes everything he turns out. It may seem as if too much stress is laid upon this perfection of execution which characterises French work in a way that is unknown to our craftsmen. And it is true that it too often proves a snare, giving an occasion for making difficulties merely to show how they can be triumphed over. But, on the other hand, it is a matter in which we in England are all too negligent. The insistence of late on the comparative unimportance of technique in relation to originality of invention has been disastrous, and the Arts and Crafts Society has, if we may venture to say so, given far too much encouragement to that point of view. There have been bindings shown there which were defective in the very elements of sound ‘forwarding’—in the finish that comes of an effective _corps d’ouvrage_, and that should never have been admitted into an exhibition supposed to be especially selective. It may be truly said that nothing is a work of art unless it attains to a fairly perfect technique, even though the decorative conception may be of considerable value.

Charles Meunier, born in 1866, served a short but energetic apprenticeship to Marius Michel, and then at the age of twenty decided to start for himself. Keen to succeed and make a place among the foremost binders of Paris, he worked with a restless and unceasing effort that might well have proved disastrous to his career. The increasing costliness of whole-binding due to the demands for originality made by amateurs had given an impetus to half-binding which Meunier was not slow to avail himself of. He at once set about supplying the demand, executing some five or six hundred, each with a different emblematic design upon the back. It was the moment when, as has been shown, the symbolist movement was at its height, and the young binder naturally echoed the note of the day. It was the same with the _cuir ciselé_, in which he quickly attained great skill, doing forty copies alone, with as many different designs of _L’histoire des quatre fils d’Aymon_, a book illustrated by Eugène Grasset, which proved a failure commercially until Marius floated it by means of his fine bindings with motives taken from the illustrations themselves. Meunier has now almost attained the position he coveted. His style has become chastened in accordance with the increasing distaste of eccentricity, and he gives greater care to the details of execution, which, according to French standards, left something to be desired in the early days of his rather too exuberant fancy. Last year he held a special exhibition in New York, showing some seventy specimens in which his decorative skill was extensively represented. His taste in colour may seem somewhat crude and his motives bizarre, but of the mastery over his materials there is no doubt. His snare is that he is a decorator before anything else, and not always sufficiently restrained, or mindful of the best traditions of decoration in its particular application to binding.

The reputation of M. Carayon is based upon _le cartonnage_, or ‘casing’ as we call it, and which is with us an inferior form of binding mainly confined to publishers’ editions. In this work the cases or covers, whether of cloth or leather, are made separately and the book held to them by the very slight attachment of pasting down the endpapers, instead of the slips on which the book is sewn being laced into the boards and then being subsequently covered with the material selected. But in France _cartonnage à la Bradel_ has become a fine art mainly through the instrumentality of M. Carayon. Supposed to be of German origin, it takes its name from the binder who first used it in France, where for some time it was considered as a temporary binding for books of value which in this way were left uncut at the edges and handled as little as possible. M. Carayon, born in 1840, started life as a soldier, soon giving up that career to become a decorative painter; but his love of books and all that concerns them finally decided his occupation. Type of the true art worker, he is to be found all day long in his atelier, though sadly crippled with rheumatism, devising some new application of _le genre Bradel_. All materials come alike to him; morocco, calf, vellum, brocade, velvet, even simple paper, produce in his hands the most exquisite results. Amateurs confide to his charge their most costly possessions, and the first artists of the day, such as Robaudi, Henriot and Louis Morin, decorate his vellum work with pen-and-ink and water-colour drawings. If one wants, indeed, to realize that the beauty of a binding does not lie in tooling, or indeed in any kind of ornament, one need only handle the little paper-covered books turned out by Carayon for a few francs. At the same time neither inlaying nor gilding has any secrets from him, and he devises the modelled, leather work executed for him by Rudeaux with the delicacy and sureness of taste that distinguish all he undertakes.

Chambolle most worthily continues the traditions associated with the name of his father. As an interpreter of the past he has a place apart and almost untouched by the main revolutionary movement that has penetrated nearly every atelier in Paris, and modified, if not overturned, its inherited traditions. To him are confided the classics of former times, which he clothes in the styles appropriate to them, keeping to a simplicity of ornamentation which reveals great taste and feeling for composition. Wisely enough, he rarely goes outside his own domain, where, in these days of reckless pursuit of novelty, he remains almost supreme.

Canape is a young binder of increasing reputation. At present he seems to specialize in what is called _la gaufrure à froid_, in which different-coloured moroccos are tooled without gold—a style which has been much in favour of late years, and in which Marius Michel was the first to effect great triumphs. His career has been watched with much interest for the last few years, and he is thought to be steadily taking place in the first rank.

Kieffer, too, is a binder whose work has a distinctly personal touch, and whose bindings have an individuality of their own. The reproductions shown testify to a certain largeness of conception in design, which, though somewhat mannered, has distinct value.

M. Pierre Roche has struck a new note in what he calls _la reliure églomisée_. It is work done on something of the same lines as that attempted by Mr. Cedric Chivers of Bath. He uses a transparent vellum which covers and protects the decoration, which thus appears, to use his own words, as if behind a veil. ‘C’est l’esprit du livre qui vient du dedans en dehors apparaître au travers des matières solides qui le protègent.’ A sculptor of great talent, this has been merely a recreation to him. He has done but a small number of books for a few distinguished clients, and, notwithstanding their success, has, like a true artist, refused to be drawn into manufacturing them, feeling it doubtful whether it is a style that should be popularized to any great extent, or rather remain as an occasional variation of the more accredited ways of book-cover decoration.