Fine, Art Deco, and other decorative Bindings

Fine Bindings and Presses [link to a list]

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a great many beautiful and unique bindings were created in England and France. In England, the Arts and Crafts movement contributed to the popularity of several private presses, which not only produced beautifully printed products, but bound them beautifully as well. The adornment was meant to complement the care taken in creating a printed text that was pleasing to the eye, and often reminiscent of its medieval influences.

From left to right: Credo by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson; English Bible (Doves Bindery and Press); The Order of Chivalry by Ramon Llull (Doves Bindery, Kelmscott Press); Utopia by Thomas More (Doves Bindery and Kelmscott Press); A Travers Chants by Hector Berlioz (Doves Bindery, printed by Michael Levy freres); Utopia by Thomas More (Kelmscott Press); John Ball and A King's Lesson by William Morris (Kelmscott Press, Doves Bindery). [To view larger images than those above, click on the desired book.]

All the books pictured above were bound by the Doves Bindery and printed by either the Doves Press or the Kelmscott Press. T. J. Cobden Sanderson (1840-1922) was the driving force behind the Doves Bindery and Press, located in Hammersmith, London. The Bindery was founded in 1893 and closed shortly before Cobden-Sanderson's death in 1922. His goal with his books was to create designs whose beauty relied on the amount of gold used, in a workshop where all who participated made intelligent contributions to the final product. In fact, he insisted on equal pay for his workers and credited all who contributed, demonstrating his socialist ideals. Cobden-Sanderson became well-known in America as well as England, influencing a fine-bindings movement there through the many students who came to learn in his workshop.

Cobden-Sanderson's overarching goal when printing was that nothing come between author and reader, which he felt was a flaw in the work of William Morris at Kelmscott Press. More specifically, he felt that at Kelmscott, the type was too heavy, the margins too small, and decoration took precedence over textual content. Emery Walker was Cobden-Sanderson's partner in the Doves Press. In 1908, when Cobden-Sanderson hoped to finally dissolve the partnership, Walker claimed ownership of the type of the press. After legal action, it was decided Cobden-Sanderson would keep the type until his death, at which point it would revert to Walker's possession. However, Cobden-Sanderson, preferring that the type not be sullied by use after his death, bequeathed it to the Thames River, just as Charles Ricketts, owner of the Vale Press, had done in 1903. Beginning with the matrices on March 21, 1913, Cobden-Sanderson carried about 2500 pounds of type to a bridge from which he dropped it into the river.

As mentioned above, the Doves Bindery also made bindings for the Kelmscott Press. The Kelmscott Press began printing in 1891 with Story of the Glittering Plain and ended in 1898, having completed the books William Morris left undone at his death in 1896. Despite the short time period, Morris created monumental works such as the 1896 edition of Chaucer's works with gorgeous woodcuts. In contrast to Cobden-Sanderson's preference for simplicity, Morris's work was highly decorated and treasured in its own right. Morris designed three typefaces, a Gothic (Golden Legend), a black letter (Troy), and a large gothic (Chaucer). [link to Kelmscott Chaucer front cover or back cover, which are blind-stamped pig skin]

Another binder, Douglas Cockerell was an apprentice at the Doves Bindery. His son Sydney was influential in the growth of the Ashendene Press, offering advice as C. H. St. John Hornby was starting out, and attempting to arbitrate the dispute between Cobden-Sanderson and Walker.

From left to right: In Memoriam by Tennyson (Douglas Cockerell binder, E. Moxon printer); Fair Rosamund by Michael Field (Vale Press); The Sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney (Vale Press, Prideaux Binding), Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlowe (Vale Press)

In addition to the Ashendene Press, two other famous presses in England at the time were the Vale Press, and the Golden Cockerel Press, which produced many fabulous items, including the Cockerel Gospels. The movement in England even influenced the development of a more artistic approach to printing in America, producing such printers as Bruce Rogers and Daniel Updike.

Art Deco Bindings [link to list]

Above: Eaux-forte originales [de] Picasso pour des textes de Buffon (Original etchings by Picasso for works by Buffon) bound by J. Anthoine Legrain. Front outside cover, front inside cover, Back outside cover, back inside cover, and spine.

Soon after the flowering of English bookbinding, the French began their own revolutions in the tradition of binding. However, rather than drawing their influences from the British Arts and Crafts movement, the French incorporated design elements from the Art Deco movement. Famous artists such as Picasso and Rodin designed bindings, which became significantly more colorful than they had been before. Here, the bindings were the focus rather than the entire book.

Jacques Anthoine-Legrain (1907-c.1970), whose work is pictured above, was the stepson of Pierre Legrain (1889-1929), one of the more famously revolutionary of the Parisian bookbinders in the early twentieth century prior to World War II. Pierre Legrain was originally employed by the decorator Paul Iribe as an assistant and it was through this job that he met the couturier and bookbinding patron Jacques Doucet. After World War I, Pierre Legrain was hired to design bindings for Doucet's library. Because he had no connection to the traditions of bookbinding, Legrain was in a position to do something completely new. In his binding designs, he favored letters and geometric shapes. He was first to practice the combination of both covers and spine into the design of the binding, and began the incorporation of letters into designs, rather than maintaining their distance.

From left to right: Colline, by Jean Giono (Paul Bonet binder); Tricorne, by Pablo Picasso (Paul Bonet); Gargantua, by Rabelais (Henri Creuzevalt); A Pablo Picasso, by Paul Eluard (Paul Bonet); Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire (Atelier 6 1/2); Le Florilege des dames (Jean Lambert)

Paul Bonet (1889-1971) was popularly declared Pierre Legrain's successor in the arts of bookbinding. Generally, Bonet would create the designs for his bindings, which a team of artisans would then implement. This fact probably allowed him to exceed the output of other bookbinders, and surprisingly he managed to avoid repetition in the hundreds of books he designed.

Other binders who became significant contributors to the field of Art Deco binding included Rose Adler and Henri Creuzevalt. As a woman, Rose Adler further demonstrates the break from tradition represented by the Art Deco binders. By the end of World War I, so many of the traditional binders had been killed that not only was their knowledge lost, but widows and other women soon began to enter what had formerly been a male-dominated field.

More Decorative Bindings

From left to right: The Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland, by Robert William Billings, (Andrew Grieve binder); The Poetical Works of John Milton (T. Nelson and Sons printer); Urgent Crier: poems by Andre Benedetto (Louis Pons and Odette Ducarre binders); Love Letters of a Musician by Myrtle Reed (Margaret Armstrong binder, Knickerbocker Press); A Chronicle of England, B. C. 55-A.D.1485, by James William Doyle (Maclehose binder and Longman, Green, Longman, Longman Roberts and Green printers).