Rogers, J.S. and C.W. Beebe. Leather Bookbindings: How to Preserve Them. Leaflet No. 398 (Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture, 1956) 7.
Louis-Sebastien Lenormand: Scientist, Professor, Daredevil, Author of a Bookbinding Manual.
One may safely assume that most of the authors of bookbinding manuals tend to be somewhere between mild-mannered and introvertedly geeky. There are some starteling exceptions to this rule, however. Witness one Louis-Sebastien Lenormand. In the image below, he is hanging from the wood framed parachute, which he invented and publicly demonstrated.
From the wikipedia entry for Louis-Sebastien Lenormand
He coined the name para-chute (Greek-against, French-fall) and intended it to save people that had to jump from tall burning buildings. He also was a professor of physics, chemistry, and technology. In his spare time he was an editor of 27 volumes of Dictionnaire Technologique (1822-1827). And he wrote one of the best bookbinding manuals of the 19th century.
His 1827 Manuel du Relier (Nouvelle Edition, 1833) was in print for over one hundred years. He credits Dudin and Lesne as predecessors. It is comprehensive and is especially concerned with technique. In addition to bound books, it also covers cartonnage allemand, or Bradel binding. There is a tremendous amount of interchange between English and French technical descriptions of bookbinding throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Hannett, in Bibliopegia, 1835, thought that Lenormand’s illustrations of the man ploughing and the disembodied beating hammer were good enough that he copied them. Even if you do not read French, the fold out plates are worth spending some time with, though unfortunately they were not opened when Google scanned Nouvelle Edition….
I won’t even attempt to speculate about the relationship between parachuting and bookbinding, other than that both fascinated Lenormand immensely. I can only applaud his life and work, like the cheering crowd in the image above.
Profitable Hobbies: A Short Course In Bookbinding
Profitable Hobbies, March 1949, My Collection
Manly Banister’s “A Short Course in Book Binding” barely presents the rudiments of bookbinding, but it is well worth the price of admission for Banister’s entertaining hubris and the highly stylized cover imagery. The woman sewing seems to have an expression somewhere between extreme self consciousness—”how do you want me to hold the needle?”— and a seething annoyance at having to pose yet again. It also appears she is sewing a newspaper? The black and white cover with red is almost noirish in its use of shadows. Despite Banister’s minimal knowledge of the field, his diagrams of DIY equipment, the sewing frame, press and plough above, may be of use to some. But like many introductory bookbinding manuals, it is not so much the information they contain that is important, but the sense of the audience for the craft that I find of interest. Binders might question how profitable bookbinding as a hobby might be, yet according to Banister bookbinding is pure profit! His recollection about how he began bookbinding is a gem:
“I got started on bookbinding when I was confined to bed for a week with a touch of the flu. There was a forty-year old book on book on bookbinding lying around which I read for the lack of anything better. I had not read far when my fingers began to itch for the feel of needle and thread. Of course, I had no tools to work with, but I went ahead anyway, propped up on pillows. I had two boards brought to me and some cord, and their combination served as my press. My wife’s old Bible was rapidly going to pieces, so I finished the process. The job was absorbing. I sewed the book and glued it and cut up an old leather jacket to cover it.”
“Bookbinding is easy. Anyone can bind a book—you and you and you! You just set your mind to it, and that’s all. If you can thread a needle, cut and fold paper, you can bind a book.”
The power of positive thinking aside, this issue of Profitable Hobbies does contain an important description of the Flash Dry method of printing, which was used by R.R. Donnelley & Sons for printing this very magazine, as well as Time, Life, Fortune, Farm Journal and Pathfinder. It supposedly is responsible for the “fine halftone work.”
Peachey Conservation 