News from 1886: Hand Bookbinding is Slowly Disappearing

“Bookbinding on a small scale seems to be one of those minor industries which are slowly disappearing. Yet we think that there is always a certain need of a good bookbinder in every country town. We recollect how such a person was once maintained in a small European city by official work, and now and then a few orders from the country gentlemen. Shopkeepers and farmers as a general rule are not bibliophilists. When, however, we come in this country to look upon a book as something of intrinsic value, we will insist on real books, in proper shape and goodly binding, and then the bookbinder’s day will have come.”

The Bookmaker: A Journal of Technical Art and Information, January 1886, p. 16.

 

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