Form & Function: The Genius of the Book: Difference between revisions

(Created page with "“Form & Function: The Genius of the Book”, was a Exhibitions at the Folger curated by the Folger’s Head of Conservation Renate Mesmer, and includes more than 110 rar...")
 
m (RachelHammer moved page Genius of the book to Form & Function: The Genius of the Book: new title)
(No difference)

Revision as of 13:06, 21 July 2021

“Form & Function: The Genius of the Book”, was a Exhibitions at the Folger curated by the Folger’s Head of Conservation Renate Mesmer, and includes more than 110 rare books from the Folger collection, including printed books and bound manuscripts. It was exhibited in the Folger’s Great Hall and opened on June 16th, 2018 and closed on September 23, 2018. Offering an entirely different perspective, Mesmer chose the volumes not for their contents, but to show the key parts of a book and the many ways that they can be combined.

"Folger conservators are fortunate to have the opportunity to closely study and examine many books in our collection," she explains. "In doing so, conservators train their eyes by repeatedly seeing features and structures of the books." The volumes in this exhibition give visitors a chance to do the same, exploring the steps that bookbinders followed centuries ago, from techniques for folding pages, to sewing patterns, to the wide range of board and covering materials.” 
Visitors can also touch and feel materials such as leather, fabric, and parchment, see an early bookbinder's tools or a conservator's modern equipment, and watch videos on papermaking, printing, sewing, and bookbinding. Magnified views explore small details, including the fine touches of an embroidered 17th-century binding. Scientific research, including the use of DNA analysis and advanced imaging, adds still more to the rare book story.  

Understanding the art and craftsmanship of such volumes helps us explore how books were made and used, makes it possible to conserve them, and gives us the knowledge to appreciate them. In this exhibition, the books speak for themselves—not through the information stored inside them, but as unique, hand-crafted objects in their own right.

File:FormFunctionLogo.jpg
The logo for the Form and Function of the Book exhibit


ADD TABLE OF CONTENTS


Curation

Renate Mesmer is the J. Franklin Mowery Head of Conservation at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She is a book and paper conservator with more than 20 years of experience in the field. She formally trained as a master bookbinder in Germany and has pursued further conservation training at renowned institutions throughout Europe and the United States. She has held previous positions conserving and restoring books and manuscripts at the University Library in Mannheim, Germany; the Speyer State Archives in Germany; and the centro del bel libro in Ascona, Switzerland.


Contents of the Exhibition

Exhibition Highlights and Discoveries />

Books with boards that are detached reveal normally hidden elements, from sewing supports to medieval manuscripts re-used as spine linings

A bound manuscript by an early 18th-century Quaker student is a work in progress, undergoing stabilization and repair in a project funded by Folger donors

Findings from the DNA analysis of wood, parchment, bookworm waste, and dust may tell us more about economics and other aspects of book production and ownership

A Shakespeare First Folio is accompanied by a copy of detailed notes from bookbinder Roger Payne, who rebound the volume in the late 1700s

An infrared image shows an inscription concealed by a pastedown in a 17th-century book—and an ultraviolet image lets us read very faded writing in another

A fascinating selection of bindings ranges from cheap, plain, and serviceable to those fit for a king or queen, including tooled goatskin and embroidery on religious themes


The Constructive Elements

Bookbinders and Manuals

Historic bookbinding manuals and images of bookbinders at work help us understand how the tradition of bookbinding was passed on through the generations.

The engraving added to this copy of the First Folio of Shakespeare shows the English binder Roger Payne (1739-97) hunching over a book in a pres. In a report adjacent to the engraving, Payne records the work he performed on this First Folio and describes his plan for the binding. He finished the book in a style he thought suitable, using motifs from plays in the gold tooling.

In Orbis Sensualium Pictus, the Czech philosopher Comenius provides Latin and English terminology for many different trades, including bookbinding. Beside an image of a bindery, Comenius provides English and Latin instructions to bind a book, explaining folding, beating, sewing, trimming, and covering boards in leather or parchment.

In A Short Instruction in the Binding of Books, Dirk de Bray, a Dutch bookbinder and painter, provides detailed bookbinding instructions and illustrations, compiled during his bookbinding apprenticeship. The manuscript (shown here in facsimile) was completed with great attention to detail, especially considering its small size.

Items Included
  • [hamnet link CallNumber]

Covering

Laced-on board bindings could be covered in leather, parchment, and alum-tawed skin in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

After the boards were laced on and the edges of the textblock were decorated, the covering material was applied. The process involved molding the material tightly around the sewing supports, adhering it to the sides, and folding it over the boards. Molding parchment, which is much stiffer than leather, over the raised sewing supports could be challenging. One way to avoid problems was to mold patches of a softer material, such as alum-tawed skin or thinner parchment, around the sewing supports before covering the rest of the book with a single piece of parchment, which had cutouts where it fit over the raised supports.

Before the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, boards were generally made of wood, but over time, paper based boards, which were cheaper and faster to prepare, replaced wooden boards.

Book covers were often blind and gold tooled, with the raised sewing supports on the spine an integral part of the design of the book’s aesthetic and not only a structural feature. Fastenings such as ties or clasps could also be attached to the boards, for practical and decorative purposes.

Boards

Spine Lining and Board Attachment

Once the textblock was sewn, the next steps were to shape and strengthen the spine, to cut away the rough edges, and attach the boards.

First, the spine was layered with glue. Next, foredge, head, and tail were trimmed with a plow or a draw knife. The spine was rounded, and the shoulders were formed for the boards to nest in. Binders used whatever scraps of material were available to use as spine linings, including paper, parchment (often manuscript or printer’s waste), and fabric. Spine linings were glued between the sewing supports or along the full length of the spine in order to support and reinforce the shape of the book. They could be prepared to fit the width of the pine, or to extend beyond the shoulders. The overhanging portion was glued to the board, adding strength to the joints.

The boards were precisely cut to size and matched the thickness and shape of the shoulders. They were attached to the textbook by lacing the sewing supports through the holes. A margin, called a square, would be left around the textblock at the head, tail, and foredge in order to protect the edges of the textblock from damage.

Early bindings were bound primarily in wooden boards, but gradually, during the sixteenth century, bookbinders transitioned to using paper-based boards, such as pulp or paste boards.

Being able to see these different materials, which are usually covered, offers conservators, curators, and researchers the opportunity to identify the manuscript, printed fragments, and materials used for the boards, allowing them to learn more about their histories and creation.

Items Included
  • [hamnet link CallNumber]

Folding Printed Sheets

The printing and folding of sheets was an elaborate process that required extreme precision from both the printer and the binder. The accuracy of the printing layout was critical to ensure that the pages were in the correct order after folding. The physical act of folding the sheets also needed great care to ensure smooth folds, as well as straight, precise positioning of the page.

The number of pages printed on a sheet of paper varied, depending on the format of the book. The unfolded example seen here is an octavo, meaning the sheets were folded three times, creating eight leaves (sixteen pages). Notice that some of the pages are printed upside-down and seem out of order, but once folded the pagination and orientation will be correct.

Books could be sold either unbound or bound in simple, temporary bindings, sometimes without opening the folds, trimming or cutting the edges of the textblock. These edges were trimmed later by the binder when the book was bound in a more permanent, durable binding, made from materials such as leather, alum-tawed skin, or parchment. Some of the bindings shown here were originally intended to be temporary but were never altered, and the unopened folds suggest that some of them were never even read. Nowadays, conservators and curators leave such folds uncut and preserve the temporary binding, as these features are important evidence of the book’s history.

Items Included
  • [hamnet link CallNumber]

Sewing Techniques

Sewing is one of the most important structural features of a book. The sewing connects and secures the gatherings and allows the book to be opened and closed.

Over the centuries, sewing techniques and materials have varied, but the principles have remained the same: gatherings are joined by sewing through the folds with linen thread onto a support such as cord, alum-tawed ski, leather, or parchment.

The bindings in this case represent commonly used sewing materials and techniques from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Sewing on flat, raised, and recessed supports can be done in a variety of ways, such as all-along, abbreviated or longstitch. The binder considered the type of binding, size, thickness, and weight of the book when choosing the sewing technique and materials to be used. However, it was not uncommon for a binder to simply choose familiar techniques and materials.

In all-along sewing, the sewing thread enters and exits the section at the kettle stitches and catches every sewing support in the section.

In abbreviated sewing, the binder leaves out or skips parts of the all-along sewing to save time and material, as well as to control the swelling of the spine.

In the longstitch sewing, sections are sewn to the cover or to a patch of material-often leather and parchment-through one or more pairs of holes.

Items Included
  • [hamnet link CallNumber]

Decorative Elements

Clasps and Ties

Fastenings were attached to a cover to hold a book closed when not in use. They range from simple ties made from leather, alum-tawed skin, or fabric, to elaborate clasps made from brass or other metals. Parchment’s sensitivity to changes in humidity often resulted in a textblock warping and pulling the boards open. After the introduction of printing and the increased use of paper instead of parchment for the textblock, fastenings became more of a decorative component than a functional one. Wooden board bindings were often fitted with raised metal bosses and corner pieces, called furniture, which protected the binding from getting scratched and damaged. More often than not, furniture was also used to emphasize the status and importance of a book and its owner.

==== Edge Decoration ====  

Common edge decorations from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries were colored, gilt, or gauffered edges. Many times, these different methods would be combined. Decorating the edges was not just for aesthetic reasons. It also protected the edges from showing dirt.

The process of edge decoration always started with cutting away rough edges, using a press and a sharp blade. Next, the edges would be polished to create a smooth surface onto which decoration was applied.

For colored edges, the pigment-based colorant could be sprinkled, dabbed, painted, or marbled on.

Gilding edges required extreme precision, timing, and skills from the binder. The binder needed to be very experienced to lay the extremely thin gold leaf on the edge, which was coated with adhesive made from egg white. The finishing touch was polishing the gold with an agate stone. This last step could easily ruin the binder’s work if the binder began the process too early.

Gauffered edges were created by pressing engraved tools onto the edges to create a pattern.

Items Included
  • [hamnet link CallNumber]

Endbands

Endbands were sewn or adhered to the head and tail of the spine of the textblock for both decoration and structural support.

Before the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, endbands were commonly sewn directly on the book over a core (made from cord, parchment, leather or alum-tawed skin), tied down to the textblock every so often, or in every gathering, providing a firm attachment to the spine. The ends of the core were laced through the boards, adding strength to the joints of the binding at head and tail.

Basic endbands were worked with plain thread on a single core, while elaborate, colorful endbands were skillfully sewn around one or more cores, using colored linen or silk thread in a variety of techniques to create beautiful patterns.

Binders were constantly trying to work more economically. Endbands were also stuck on with adhesive and not tied down or laced. While frugal, this provided less strength to the binding. These stuck-on endbands were produced off the textblock, sewn on the linen or parchment supports, and then adhered to the textblock once finished. The endband could drape over the sides of the boards to add greater strength to the joints, or simply be the same width as the spine.

Items Included

Embroidered Bindings

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, religious books such as bibles and prayer books were often bound in embroidered covers for private use. An embroidered cover provided decoration, personalization, and protection for the textblock.

The embroidery of such covers was commonly worked in silk, linen, or metal thread on a supporting background of canvas, velvet, or satin.

Floral designs and religious scenes were common motifs, with many designs wrapping around the entire cover in a single scene. Raised sewing supports on the spine were integrated into the overall design. The embroidery was completed once the size of the binding was known; it had to fit exactly around the spine and boards.

These beautiful bindings were not produced in large amounts, and most were unique. However, some designs were made from the same pattern and could be used to cover similarly sized books. The color and certain aspects of the design might change, but the main elements of the design would remain the same.

While some embroidered covers were made by women working at home, most of them were produced by professional embroiderers.

Items Included
  • [hamnet link CallNumber]