A History of the Bookbinder

The Beginnings in Antiquity

The custom of giving books firm covers and adorning them artistically can be traced back to antiquity. Before the codex — the book in the form familiar to us — came into being, the peoples of the Mediterranean preserved their knowledge on scrolls of papyrus or parchment. The Romans, Greeks and other cultures used tablets of wood or wax that could be joined together with cords or hinges: the diptych (two tablets) and the triptych (three). In these one can already recognise the guiding ideas of the later bookbinding — the protection of the written material and, at the same time, its dignified and often elaborate presentation.

The true cradle of bookbinding, however, was Egypt. There, from about the 2nd century AD, the Coptic Christians developed the first genuine form of the codex. In this so-called Coptic binding, several folded sections of papyrus, parchment or — later — paper were sewn directly to one another with a chain stitch across the spine, entirely without supporting cords. This technique allowed a book to be opened flat and written on both sides, and it did much to help the codex gradually supplant the scroll. Coptic binding remained in use for many centuries around the eastern Mediterranean, in the Islamic Near East and in North Africa — and in Ethiopia into modern times.

The Precious Binding of the Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages the book — above all the liturgical book — became an object of the highest craftsmanship and artistry. In the writing rooms (scriptoria) of the monasteries, manuscripts were produced whose bindings were built over wooden boards of beech or oak. These boards were covered with leather, which could be worked with blind tooling, gilding or punched ornament.

Especially valuable volumes — so-called treasure bindings or goldsmiths' bindings — were adorned with goldwork, ivory carving, filigree, enamel and even precious stones. The binding was thus not merely a protective shell but an expression of the value placed on the written word, and on the sacred text in particular. Because of the sensitivity of parchment, which tends to cockle in damp conditions, the heavy boards were frequently fitted with clasps and catches that held the book firmly shut. For the same reason, binders introduced metal fittings and bosses to protect the corners and faces of the boards when the volumes lay flat on a reading desk. In some forms of binding, such fittings remained in use into the late 19th century.

The Invention of Printing and the Rise of the Trade

With the invention of printing from movable type around the middle of the 15th century by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, the situation of the bookbinder changed fundamentally. As long as books were copied one at a time by hand, their number was small; now, however, printed works could be produced in many identical copies. Early printing supplied only the loose, printed sheets — these still had to be bound by hand as before. A rapidly growing demand thus arose, and what had been a monastic activity became an independent civic trade.

From this point on, the binderies worked closely with the printing houses and with the booksellers. As in other crafts, those engaged in the book trade joined together in guilds to regulate training, quality and sale. In England, for instance, the Mayor and Aldermen of London approved the formation of a Guild of Stationers as early as 1403, whose members included bookbinders alongside scribes, illuminators and booksellers; with the royal charter of 1557 this company gained far-reaching authority over the whole book trade. The guild governed the classic path from apprentice through journeyman to master, who was permitted to open his own workshop only after producing a masterpiece.

It was in this period that bookbinding developed into the wealth of techniques that still define the craft today: sewing the sections onto raised or recessed bands, rounding the spine, casing the book block into its cover, and the elaborate gilding and tooling of the leather. The materials changed too — alongside leather and parchment, pasteboard came increasingly into use, and, in the 19th century, bookbinder's cloth.

Industrialisation and the Changing Profession

The most profound change came with the rise of industrial bookbinding in the late 19th century. Machines and automatic devices gradually took over those operations that had previously been performed by the binder's hand alone: folding, gathering, sewing, rounding and casing-in. Print runs grew, production times fell, and the book became an affordable mass-produced commodity. In many places the hand bookbinder became the industrial bookbinder, whose task lay less in making by hand than in setting up and overseeing the machines.

Yet the classic craft did not disappear; rather, it shifted to special fields of work. Today the hand bookbinder is engaged above all in the restoration and preservation of old books — in the service of museums, libraries, universities and private collectors. He also finds a place as a sample-maker (Mustermacher) in industrial binding, producing by hand the first samples and prototypes from which the machines later work in series. And in the field of fine binding and book art the centuries-old tradition lives on: as a consciously cultivated craft that once again understands the binding as a work of art, as the medieval masters once did.