Stephanie J. Gibbs | Bookbinding & Conservation

Bookbinding & Book Conservation in the Twentieth Century Stephanie Gibbs		Presented paper: Institute for Paper Conservation July 2006 Edinburgh, UK click here to download the published postprint

"I can illustrate in certain instances the necessity of knowing the principle of perspective in trade, for upholsterers, for bookbinding, etc: I wanted some cases made to contain my sketches, which I call my Hours of Idleness, and I wanted them in the shape of a large book, inscribed as "Sketches." I went to a bookbinder; I said, "I want a case made very peculiarly, so that language itself cannot explain it to you: do you understand drawing?" This was spoken to the foreman of Mssrs. Layton, in Coldbath-Fields; he said, "Yes." "Then I have no more to say."	I then took a sheet of paper, and drew the geometrical figures; then I drew the perspective views of this book or box, open and shut, and he was perfectly satisfied, and no further conversation took place; and when Mr. Layton called on me to get paid, I said I am delighted with the result, and you must be a fortunate man to have so talented a foreman, and who so well understands drawing, which is a language of itself, for I only made drawings for that which was a very difficult thing, and I could not explain by language, and he has finished it in a manner beyond my expectation." --"Do you think such attainments are uncommon?" -"I think so; but they accelerate trade and commerce uncommonly."	Minutes of evidence 1836. qq 208-215: the evidence of Henry Sass. Report of the Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures. 1836.

Every child, boy, and youth, whatever his condition or position in life, should devote daily at least one or two hours to some serious activity in the production of some definite external piece of work. Lessons through and by work, through and from life, are by far the most impressive and intelligible, and most continuously and intensely progressive both in themselves and in their effect on the learner.	... The domestic and scholastic education of our time leads children to indolence and laziness; a vast amount of human power thereby remains undeveloped and is lost. educationist Froebel William A. Baldwin Industrial-Social Education

[A Bible, for example] CRUMBLING LITERALLY INTO DUST, and which was in this state, in parts, before ever the volume was used. ... Some of the most expensive works of modern times contain within themselves the seeds of destruction and the elements of decay ...	I have watched for some years the progress of the evil, and have no hesitation in saying, that if the same ratio of progression is maintained, a century more will not witness the volumes printed within the last twenty years.	John Murray (1824) Observations and experiments on the bad composition of modern paper; with the description of a permanent writing ink, which cannot be discharged.

"There flourished the Victorian notion that a profession, even at its best, must be slightly inartistic, and that art, even at its best, must be slightly unprofessional. In those happy days [1891] artists behaved and dressed a class apart, and professional men slept in their tophats.		Norman Shaw, himself a practical man as well as a great artist, wrote an essay with the title The Artist is Not Necessarily Unpractical, and everybody agreed that he was not necessarily so with the inward reservation that more often than not he would be." H. S. Goodheart-Rendel, 1937

The wall of conceit that separates the artist from the working man must disappear, ... for in the last analysis we are all working men, and only now and then arises among us a genius who is worthy of the artist's name.	That is a gift of god which might come to the humblest craftsman as well as to the most educated academician. Away with the snobbery of art - let us all learn to be laborers for the common good in the great democracy of tomorrow.	W. Gropius

		It is desirable in every way that men of good education should be brought back into the productive crafts: there are more than enough of us "in the City." Douglas Cockerell Bookbinding and the Care of Books

Like men, books have a soul and a body. With the soul, or literary portion, we have nothing to do at present; the body, which is the outer frame or covering, and without which the inner would be unusable, is the special work of the binder.	He, so to speak, begets it; he determines its form and adornment, he doctors it in disease and decay, and, not unseldom, dissects it after death. William Blades, 1902

[Bookbinding and restoration] is all skilled work, and if any library is able to afford it there is no question but that a large saving would be effected, both in money and in efficiency, if it would set up a small bindery of its own.	I think, however, that it would not be wise to set up such a bindery unless some member of the superior staff has gone through the binding shops and is able to bind a book properly himself.	[N.B. - In London the practical knowledge is very difficult to obtain, as the Technical Education Board of the London County Council does not admit amateurs.] Cyril Davenport The Repairing and Binding of Books for Public Libraries, 1905

	Destroy completely the book in art (an inert form of conveying words by means of paper and typeface), and turn directly to the art of life, putting poetry and thoughts on fences, walls, houses, factories, roofs, on the wings of airplanes, on the decks of ships, on sails, with electric projectors in the sky, on clothing.	Russian Futurist Kamenskii, 1918


	"Some years ago the binders in The New York Public Library realized how conflicting were the pieces of information and advice they were able to secure as to treatment of leather, and they set out to experiment and observe for themselves.	Every solution or preparation that came to attention or could be found by diligent search was tried, and careful notes were taken of the results. ... All skins treated with any preparation ... were benefited, even specimens knowingly selected as acid tanned." Harry Lydenberg and John Archer The Care and Repair of Books, 1931

Writing should be made to take the shape of the articles, and one should write directly on articles.	... There is not the slightest doubt that specific novelties would arise through the direct contact with the object, from this so very material and novel unifying of thought with the object. ... Such writing could be on an egg or on a roughly cut slice of bread.	I dream of a mysterious manuscript written in white ink and completely covering the strange, firm surfaces of a brand new Rolls Royce. Let the privilege of old be conferred on everyone; let everyone be able to read from things. Andre Breton, 1939

There is a need for reorienting administrative thought on the whole subject of book conservation and binding; consideration of binding and book conservation as they are today are not enough. ...	[Conservation] applies to any library collection, whether it be of Egyptian papyrus, of the third-grade classroom library in an Iowa village, or of a university's incunabula. Pelham Barr, 1946

		A book rebound in a fresh new cover is like a young library assistant in a bright new dress. Both catch the eye of the library's patrons and both stand a better chance of being "taken out." Library Binding Manual, American Library Association, 1951.

	"It is wise to consider that the repair techniques advocated here will often make it impossible for a binder to work on a book. His screams will be heard for miles." Brooke Byrne, Mending Books is Fun!

	Leather bound books ... are beautiful; they are valuable and usually quite irreplaceable. ... Leather is, you see, a natural product, not an artifact. It's skin. Skin needs oil to stay soft and pliable. I don't have to labor this point to librarians who likely invest in skin cream for their own complexions. ...	There is a technique which can be employed to render even the driest, most perished leather soft, pleasant to handle, and perfectly usable. [Materials include] one can neat's foot oil ... one jar saddle soap ... one colorless paste shoe polish. ... When you're dealing with the irreplaceable, a slight additional expense is very well justified. Lawyers and doctors customarily have valuable libraries, often bound in solid leather, which cost the devil and all. ... A mender [at the local library] might agree to handle the job on her vacation or in her spare time.

		Science, probably in the course of looking for something else, has produced precisely this miracle. ... It makes possible book-repair which really does repair, and for keeps, books which would otherwise have to be discarded or rebound. It's known technically as polyvinyl acetate, but we'll call it "plastic adhesive", which seems a reasonable description. It's creamy white, water-soluble, tricky as a monkey until you learn how to use it, and pure magic for mending books (and just about everything else in the world, except maybe bathing caps). Mending Books is Fun!

	There are a number of plastic adhesives which are remarkably strong but they are still relatively new compared with the age of books, and their durability is not known yet in terms of hundreds of years. A number of these adhesives are difficult to re-dissolve without the use of powerful solvents. This is a disadvantage from an archivist's point of view as it means that it may be difficult to remove repairs from valuable books.	It is always possible to make a mistake in repairing and it may be serious if it cannot be corrected. ... Some of the advertisements for them [Polyvinyl Acetate adhesives] claim that they will repair almost any book in any condition. Sydney Cockerell, The Repairing of Books, 1958.

	Librarians generally are not well informed about the preservation and repair of library materials. Formal professional training in binding and restoration is not given in this country, and even informal instruction is available only in large metropolitan centers. Carolyn Horton, 1967

There is a remarkable contrast between the level of conservation technical expertise and the knowledge of library requirements. The Cambridge 1980 Symposium, for example, brought into focus the extensive range of technical expertise and scientific knowledge which exists internationally. It also underlined how little this scholarly progress and scientific research impinges on libraries.		F. W. Ratcliffe, Preservation policies and conservation in British libraries, 1984

	"I'm still surprised that things do change. I can't believe it, quite. Some of those stories are 50 years old. My old paperbacks are all yellow and crumbly. Am I that yellow and crumbly, I ask myself?" John Updike

Bibliography
	1 F. Bearman, 'Conservation Principles and Ethics: Their Origins and Development,' IPC Conference Papers London 1997, ed. J. Eagan, (Leigh: The Institute of Paper Conservation, 1997) 83-89. 2 C. Ashwin, Art Education: documents and policies 1768-1975 (London: Society for Research into Higher Education, 1975) 39. 3 Report of the Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures, 'Minutes of evidence 1836. qq 208-215: the evidence of Henry Sass'. Ashwin, 21. 4 A. Mackmurdo, 'History of the Arts and Crafts Movement', unpublished typescript, quoted in c. Goldstein, Teaching Art: Academies and Schools from Vasari to Albers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 259. 5 W.A. Baldwin, Industrial-Social Education (Springfield, MA: Milton Bradley Co., 1907) 49-50. 6 Ashwin, 59. 7 M. Plant, The English Book Trade: an economic history of the making and sale of books (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1939) 330. 8 J. Murray, Observations and experiments on the bad composition of modern paper; with the description of a permanent writing ink, which cannot be discharged (London: G and WB Whittaker, 1824) cited in: S. Roggia, William James Barrow: A Biographical Study of His Formative Years and His Role in the History of Library and Archives Conservation From 1931 to 1941 (New York: Columbia University, 1999). 9 D. Cockerell, Bookbinding and the Care of Books: a textbook for bookbinders and librarians (London: The Artistic Crafts Series of Technical Handbooks, 1948 [reprint] [1901 first edition]). Plant, 338. 10 Roggia, (http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byauth/roggia/barrow/) 11 Roggia, (http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byauth/roggia/barrow/) 12 Ashwin, 63. 13 Baldwin, 27. 14 W. Gropius, quoted in M. Kentgens-Craig, The Bauhaus and America: First Contacts 1919-1936 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999) 108. 15 S. Freeman, A syllabus of a course on elementary bookmaking and bookbinding (New York: Columbia University, 1910) 16 Report of the Committee on Leather for Bookbinding, Sir H.T. Wood, and The Rt Hon Viscount Cobham, eds (London: Society of Arts, 1905). W. Hulme. Leather for Libraries. (London : Sound Leather Committee of the Library Association, 1905) 17 Cockerell, 271. 18 Cockerell, Editor's preface, page x. 19 W. Blades, The Enemies of Books (London: Elliot Stock, 1902) 105-6. 20 C. Davenport, 'The Repairing and Binding of Books for Public Libraries', from E.W. Hulme, et al. Leather for Libraries (London: The Sound Leather Committee of the Library Association 1905). 21 Davenport, from Hulme. 22 R. Castleman, A Century of Artists Books (New York: MOMA, 1994) 73. 23 B. Spector, 'The Book Alone: Object and Fetishism', in T.A. Eaton, Books as Art (Boca Raton: LA Museum of Art, 1993) 40. 24 N. Gurianova, 'A Game in Hell, Hard Work in Heaven: Deconstructing the Canon in Russian Futurist Books', in The Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910-1934, M. Rowell, and D. Wye, eds (New York: MOMA, 2002) 30. 25 Employing Bookbinders Of America, A Course in Bookbinding for Vocational Training: Part One Elementary Section (New York: Employing Bookbinders Of America, 1927). 26 B. Kay, The Development of the Architectural Profession in Britain: a sociological study, (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1960) 14. 27 Whitehead (47) 72-3. in Kay, 14. 28 Ashwin, 74-6. 29 Ministry of Education Pamphlet No. 6 Art Education (London, 1946): 33-34 cited in Ashwin, 81. 30 Ashwin, 83. 31 W. Herzberg, 'Future of our printed works', cited in Wochenblatt fuer Papierfabrikation vol 38 (June) Sosman, R. B. (trans) Chemical Abstracts 1907, vol. 1:2634; from Roggia. 32 T. Burns, 'A serious and universal evil: the early scientific study of paper deterioration' in Works of Art on Paper, Books, Documents, and Photographs, V. Daniels, et al, eds (London: The International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, 2002) 39-40. 33 Burns, 40. 34 Technical Bulletin No 22 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1940). 35 Roggia. 36 H. Lydenberg and J. Archer, The Care and Repair of Books (New York: R.R. Bowker Company, 1931). 37 H.J. Plenderleith, The Preservation of Leather Bookbindings (London: The Trustees of the British Museum, 1946, 1970 [reprint]) 18-19. 38 M. Kentgens-Craig, The Bauhaus and America: First Contacts 1919-1936 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999) 78. 39 A. Breton, 1939 cited in J. Munro, and H.G. Fletcher, Exhibition Notes, 'French Book Art/Livres d'Artistes: Artists and Poets in Dialogue, exhibition at the New York Public Library May 5-August 19, 2006' from The dialogue between Painting and Poetry: Livres d'Artistes, 1874-1999, J. Khalfa, ed. (Cambridge, England: Black Apollo Press, 2001). 40 P. Barr, 'Book Conservation and University Library Administration', College and Research Libraries 7 (July 1946): 214-219. 41 The Report of the National Advisory Council on Art Education (The First Coldstream Report). 1960. Ashwin, 93-99. 42 L. Feipel and E. Browning, Library Binding Manual (Chicago: American Library Association, 1951) 3. 43 L. Town, Bookbinding by Hand (London: Faber and Faber, 1956). 44 S. Cockerell, The Repairing of Books (London: The Sheppard Press, 1958). 45 B. Byrne, Mending Books is Fun! (Minneapolis: Burgess Publishing Company, 1956). 46 Cockerell. 47 C. Horton, Cleaning and Preserving Bindings and Related Materials. Pamphlet 1 of a Series. Conservation of Library Materials: LTP [Library Technology Program] Publications No. 12. (Chicago: American Library Association, 1967) 48 Cunha, G., ed. Library and Archives Conservation: The Boston Athenaeum's 1971 Seminar on the Application of Chemical and Physical Methods to the Conservation of Library and Archival Materials, May 17-21, 1971. (Boston: The Library of the Boston Athenaeum, 1972) [Ed note. It is not clear what the title of the published work is that Cunha is editor of. Please explain. He was the editor / coordinator of a conference held in Boston in 1971, the title of the conference being 'Library and Archives Conservation.'] 49 S. Ogden, 'The Impact of the Florence Flood on Library Conservation in the United States of America: a survey of the literature published 1956-1976', Restaurator 3 (1979): 1-36. Also P. Darling, and S. Ogden, 'From problems perceived to problems in practice: the preservation of library resources in the U.S.A. 1956-1980', Library Resources and Technical Services 25 (January, 1981): 9-29. 50 G. M. Cunha and D. Grant, Library and Archives Conservation: 1980s and beyond (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1983). 51 L. Young, Bookbinding and Conservation by Hand: a working guide (NY & London: R.R. Bowker Company, 1981). Also J. Greenfield, Books: their care and repair (NY: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1983). 52 F.W. Ratcliffe, Preservation policies and conservation in British libraries. Library and information research report number 255 (Boston Spa, England: British Library, 1984) 53 D.Grattan, and R.S. Williams, 'From ' '91'' to '42': Questions of conservation for modern materials', in Mortality Immortality: The Legacy of Twentieth Century Art, ed. M.A. Corzo (Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute, 1999) 67-74. 54 for example, From Marble to Chocolate: the Conservation of Modern Sculpture, ed. J. Heuman, (London: Archetype Publications, 1995). Modern Works, Modern Problems? ed. A. Richmond, (Leigh: Institute of Paper Conservation, 1994). Conservation of historic and artistic works on paper: proceedings of a conference, Ottawa, Canada, October 3 to 7, 1988, ed. H.D. Burgess, (Ottawa: Canadian Conservation Institute, 1994). M.A. Corzo, ed. Modern Art: Who Cares? eds. I. Hummelen and D. Sillé (Amsterdam: The Foundation for the Conservation of Modern Art and the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, 1999). Contemporary Art: Curation, Collection and Conservation, eds. C. Gogarty, and Z. Reid (Dublin: Irish Professional Conservators' and Restorers' Association, 2001) 55 E. Brockes, 'Making Hay [An Interview with John Updike]', The Guardian, 1 June 2004, section G2:2.

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