I. Introduction

The first half of the twentieth century saw a vast amount of change in the political and social arenas: in England alone, Queen Victoria died, soldiers were sent out to two world wars, a depression fell, and the empire was drastically restructured. The field of bookbinding and book production suffered similarly, and both trade and commercial bindings have gained a reputation for a continued degradation of materials and skills which began with the Industrial Revolution. A typical example of the attitude towards recent productions can be summarized thus:

“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?”

Reflected in the above quote we see the major thread which will run through any discussion about the longevity of twentieth century products: the fact that consumer products aging in one’s own lifetime is a constant source of surprise, as they force the person to directly confront their own changes and mortality. Without spending an undue amount of time considering the philosophy of mortality, it is worth acknowledging that observing any change in a product of one's own lifetime (or one’s community memory) causes a reaction often out of proportion to the actual amount of observed change, as the benchmarks for comparison are too recent, too new, and it is impossible to rationally distinguish between the product which is aging from the ‘brand new’ product currently available.

Instead of viewing the period from 1900 to 1950 as a stream of loss and decay, a survey of literature contemporary to the early twentieth century as well as that written in later years reveals that this time was a period of consolidation from the rapid changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution and Victorian economic boom. The turn of the century saw the wide-scale cooperation between manufacturing, academic, and craft disciplines actively researching and discussing their consumer inheritance from previous generations, with beneficial results from these discussions observable through the published reports, monographs, and journal articles; the establishment of schools with lasting reputations; and the standardization of government regulations and industry standards as pertained to both the trade / manufacturing and collections / museums aspects of book production.

I. Craftsmanship Background

In 1901, a benchmark in modern bookbinding was set when Douglas Cockerell published Bookbinding and the Care of Books, a volume to be reissued for many years without requiring substantial revision. This work was written for two distinct audiences, aiming to more closely ally the needs of the librarians with the practices of the bookbinders: the author stated that his purpose was to educate librarians to select sound methods of binding for books, rather than relying on superficial aesthetics. Bookbinding ostensibly outlines the craft methods for producing a hand bound book, but its scope is significantly wider: Cockerell used his reputation as a binder of quality to communicate the reports of the Society of Arts on the deterioration of paper (1898) and leather (also published in 1901) to an audience on both the supply (binders) and demand (library) side, and a great proportion of the publication is dedicated to the material issues which effected the longevity of materials.

Examining the career and reputation of Douglas Cockerell provides in one person many of the themes of book production of this time, from his beginnings as a late Victorian apprentice in the Doves Bindery under T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, to his position as director of the bookbinding department of the publishing house W.H. Smith, to his active role with the Society of Arts for their studies of material decay. Bernard Middleton described “Cockerell’s basic aim which, at the beginning of the century was revolutionary in bookbinding and many other spheres – fitness for purpose.” The Arts and Crafts movement had stressed the importance of hand craftsmanship over machine produced items; the role of Cockerell was to return the values of hand craftsmanship to the requirements of a commercial industry, and to broaden the audience for the message of quality and durability through working standards.

The work and efforts of Douglas Cockerell did much to publicise the choices available to bookbinders and the decisions which the binder could make to ensure a greater lifetime for his works; this can be seen especially as he discusses the longevity of modern bookbinding leathers, a field where he assigns as much blame to the bookbinders as to the manufacturers. While Cockerell acknowledged the role of ‘preventative conservation’ through controls of the storage of books and susceptibility to light and air pollution, he bluntly stated that there are two types of bookbindings: those that “adequately protect books” and those that “fail to protect books”. When a bookbinding ceased to offer protection, the fault then must lay with either the materials being badly selected, prepared, or through faulty binding. When examining leather bookbindings for the Committee on Leather for Bookbinding , the declared result for leathers from 1860 onwards placed as much blame onto the binders as the tanners: “The deterioration of calf bindings at the latter end of the nineteenth century may be attributed as much to the excessive thinness as to the poor quality of the material.”

Cockerell sought to create a knowledgeable customer base (librarians) for an educated craftsmanship community (bookbinders), each cooperating in the search for materials of greater durability and sound workmanship, and each recognizing the actual costs of both their material and aesthetic decisions. The advocacy work that he did laid the groundwork for the continued interest in establishing conservation as a professional field, a field balancing the interests of skills, materials, cost and durability. From this perspective in bookbinding, it is possible to examine the movements which were taking place in the commercial publishing sphere and the manufacturing and chemical properties of the materials in use.

Brockes, Emma. “Making Hay [An Interview with John Updike]” in The Guardian 1 June 2004, section G2, p. 2.

Cockerell, Douglas (1925). Bookbinding and the Care of Books: a textbook for bookbinders and librarians. The Artistic Crafts Series of Technical Handbooks, 1948 [reprint]. [1901 first edition]. Author’s Note, p. xi.

Middleton, Bernard C. A History of English Craft Bookbinding Technique. London: Hafner Publishing Company, 1963. p. 273-275.

ibid. p. 18.

Society of Arts, report published in 1905 although extensively published in Bookbinding

Cockerell, Douglas (1925). Bookbinding.... The Artistic Crafts Series of Technical Handbooks, 1948 [reprint]. [1901 first edition]. p. 270.

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