- About Bookbinding -
Bookbindings Old and New
Notes of a Book-Lover by Brander Matthews
The Search for Novelty part 2
This same house published the "Book of the Tile Club," a portly folio bound in sturdy canvas - a material already used by Mr. Marvin (for Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons) in the cover of "A Girl's Life 80 Years Ago" (Whereon the title was printed in imitation of a child's sampler, a pleasant fantasy). The "Book of the Tile Club" was altogether a more imposing tome, with its delightfully decorative side-stamp by Mr. Stanford White, with its prominent (not to call them aggressive) nerves across the back, with its brassbound corners, with every page separately and securely mounted on a linen guard, and with its personal and peculiar end-papers wherein we can trace the portraits or insignia of the Tilers, with everyone his 1zom de guerre. "The Book of the Tile Club" was aimed high and it hit its mark fairly and squarely in the bull's eye.
End-papers of special design are among the refinements of book making, which might be seen oftener than they are when publishers are giving time and thought to the preparation of an exceptional volume. Those in the Grolier Club edition of the" Philobiblon " were admirably in keeping with the text. They may even be made useful, as they were in Dr. Eggleston's histories of the United States, where they are maps. But supplementary delicacies of this sort can be expected only when, in the phrase of the cockney art critic, "the book is illustrated by the celebrated French artist De Luxe."
Still rarer is another ancillary adornment to be found in certain proof copies of Mr. W. J. Loftie's "Kensington: Picturesque and Historical." These, it was announced by the publisher, would "have painted in water colors on the front, under the gilt edges of the leaves, a couple of Kensington views, which, until the leaves are bent back at an angle, will be invisible." In Mr. S. P. Avery's copy of the Grolier Club edition of Irving's "Knickerbocker," the water colors under the gilt of the fore edge are the work of Mr. G. H. Boughton. But this is an excursus. There are so many byways of booklore that the book lover can hardly help digressing occasionally.