Thomas K. Ford

“ Very little the binder had done so far would be visible in the finished product. But at this point he could begin to put his artistry on display. Selecting silk thread in two colors to suit his taste, he bound a narrow piece of leather across both the top and bottom of the spine, completely covering them with something like a buttonhole stitch. These “headbands” added little to the strength but much to the appearance of a book. Careful binders said that a book should no more be seen in a library without headbands than a gentleman should appear in public minus a collar. ”

“ A daybook was simply a running record of each day’s transactions of all kinds, more often called a “journal” nowadays. It would certainly have been bound right in the shop, and this daybook bears the impress of a stamp previously identified with Parks’s Annapolis and earliest Williamsburg imprints.
Another daybook of the Williamsburg printing office also survives in original binding. It dates from the time of Hunter’s successor, Joseph Royle, and almost beyond question was also bound in the shop where it was used. ”

“ Men like William Parks, John Stretch, and Thomas Brend bound books in eighteenth-century Williamsburg in essentially the same way as had their predecessors in medieval monasteries a thousand years before.
Incidentally, among bookbinding craftsmen one does not mention “machine binding”; to the true binder there is no true binding except by hand. The machines of a modern 3 bindery do not “bind” a book according to the craft tradition, but “case” it. ”

“ Archaeological excavations on the site of the Printing Office have yielded examples of these tools, some for stamping letters and 10 others for impressing the gilded decoration that made the eighteenth-century bookbinder’s products as attractive as they were useful.
Under the eye of microscope and enlarging camera even mass-produced typewriters reveal slight irregularities that are unique to each machine. The brass stamps and rolls used by eighteenth-century binders for working decorations into leather were all made by hand. ”

“ Man learned to write long before he learned to make paper. Smooth stones, clay tiles, and wax tablets, among other surfaces, were early precursors of scratch-pads and typewriter bond. Later, but before the modern form of a paged book developed, written records were most often kept on long rolls of papyrus, parchment, or vellum—the latter two being much alike. ”

“ One English craftsman who did identify his products was Roger Payne of London. An eccentric and a heavy drinker, Payne was nevertheless a careful worker and a creative artist in the bindery. His books are beautifully adorned with patterns built up with small tools that he designed and cut himself. In many of the books he bound, Payne included a detailed account of his work. The following statement, copied in part from a Bible now owned by Princeton University, is a good example:
Letter’d in ye most exact manner, exceeding rich small Tool Gilt Back of a new pattern studded in Compartments. ”

“ Very probably one or more of them was specifically hired to handle the binding end of the business, just as William Hunter later employed John Stretch to do both bookbinding and bookkeeping.
However, like Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, William Bradford in New York, and James Franklin in Boston, Parks was doubtless quite capable of binding a book as well as printing it. Eighteenth-century craftsmen of every sort customarily doubled in related crafts: the silversmith was likely to be a jeweler, too, and the cabinetmaker also a house-joiner. ”

“ The title (abbreviated) usually appears in gold leaf on a small panel of colored leather glued to the spine, and sometimes the author’s name, too;
The spine may also bear a moderate amount of decorative gold tooling; and
The sides of the volumes, where visible, are likely to display “blind” tooling, which means ornamental indentations in the surface of the leather, made without gold leaf.
These are the five most noticeable characteristics of books bound in the eighteenth century in England or in England’s North American colonies. ”

“ Because of some imperfection in workmanship or simply because ornamental dies were not supposed to duplicate each other, each tool had its own peculiarities. Very often the distinguishing characteristics of the impressions they made are visible to the naked eye. ”

“ Two such telltale tools—both “rolls” or wheel-like tools used to make continuous border patterns—proved especially useful in tracing the history of Williamsburg bookbinders and bindings. The trail of one can be followed through the ownership of successive binders for nearly three-quarters of a century. Another shows up again and again throughout a fifty-year period. Similar clues left by other tools were also helpful in the detective process, but cannot be dealt with in this brief account.
For convenience we shall call the two chief telltales the “Mousetrap” roll and the “egg” roll. ”

“ His interests ranged over the whole field of human knowledge, with particular emphasis on history, literature, law, and politics. However, it is not with the substance but with the form of these volumes in the renewed library that we are concerned. For us the important fact 2 is that, with a few exceptions, they are eighteenth-century books in eighteenth-century bindings.
The visitor who pauses only for a moment to look at them will see that most of them share certain outward characteristics:
They are bound in leather, with brown calfskin predominant ”

“ Its physical structure was largely the creation of monastic craftsmen of the early Middle Ages, just as its literary content throughout that period was most often religious scripture or comment.
5 BOOKS CAN BE BEAUTIFUL
Speaking only of quality of materials and workmanship, a book may be bound just as well in a simple cover as in an ornate one. Fine binding does not require adornment. It does require the services of a man of high skill and matching integrity, whose handiwork will inevitably display the quiet beauties of intrinsic quality. ”

“ The several Williamsburg printers who followed Royle left no daybooks or other records that have yet come to light. What little we know of their bookbinding activities comes from their advertisements in the various Virginia Gazettes. (At one time three separate weekly papers were issued in Williamsburg by rival printers, all called the Virginia Gazette!) Here are some typical samples:
GENTLEMEN may now be supplied, on short notice, at the Printing Office, Williamsburg, with BLANK BOOKS of all sizes, ruled or unruled, and bound either in Calf or Vellum. ”

“ The example illustrated indicates that colonial binders continued to favor the Cambridge design until well into the eighteenth century.
Left, “cottage” style decoration on a 1674 Bible, bound in the shop of Samuel Mearne of London. Right, “Cambridge” style binding on a copy of Muscipula printed in 1728 by William Parks in Annapolis and bound by him.
Around 1760 a Dutch binder developed a method of treating leather with acid to give it a marbled appearance, and other binders lost no time in prying the secret away from him. ”

“ Having decided on the pattern of decoration he wished to apply, the binder heated the appropriate brass tools to “blind in” the design. The tools had to be hot enough to make a sharp impression in the leather, but not hot enough 30 to burn it. Each had to be pressed into the leather with just the right weight—not too much and not too little—to produce the desired effect. ”

“ This increase in dimensions of paper took place gradually, and as the size of sheets grew the size of pages could also grow. A result was that folio books became too large to be handy while quarto and octavo formats, which were more economical to print, gained popularity among both printers and book buyers. ”

“ The outside finished in the Richest & most elegant Taste Richer, & more exact than any Book that I ever Bound. The insides finished in a new design exceeding elegant. Bound in the very best manner sew’d with silk on strong and neat Bands. The Back lined with Russia Leather under the Blue morrocco. Cover very strong & neat Boards....
TELLTALE TOOLS
Although some colonial binders labeled their products, none of the several Williamsburg bookbinders of colonial days followed Roger Payne’s admirable precedent. ”