BINDING AS A FINE ART

Summary

I now pass on to consider Bookbinding as a Fine Art, and here I feel that I am treading upon dangerous ground and walking without a guide. All agree that binding should take rank among the decorative arts, but I do not find that any principles have been evolved for the guidance of the binder, or that any definite indication of the points of its connection with or divergence from other arts has been satisfactorily set forth.

De Quincey, in alluding to the choice of the trade of bookbinding by the Ferrars, writes:— “Why this was a good trade to choose, I will explain in a brief digression. It is a reason which applies only to three other trades, viz., to coining, to printing books, and to making gold or silver plate. And the reason is this–all the four arts stand on an isthmus, connecting them, on one side, with the vast continent of merely mechanical arts; on the other side, with the far smaller continent of fine arts.” This is true in a double sense, for in one point of view, every good binder who tries to work out an idea is an artist, whether the result is plain or ornamental; and, in another, the finished side of some richly tooled book is as much a work of art as any picture or drawing.