18th C. French bookbinding – Page 2

May 19, 2009January 28, 2013

18th Century French Reading

Robert Darnton’s wonderful book, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, is fascinating reading for anyone interested in the history of books. In one section, he speculates on how people actually read a book in the 18th century. Darnton is aware of the difficulties of moving from the what to the how of reading, but courageously proceeds. He notes that “Books as physical objects were very different in the eighteenth century from what they are today, and their readers perceived them differently.” Substitute “in various time periods” for “in the eighteenth century” and this statement is a concise raison d’etre for book conservation.

The following extended quotation is from the chapter titled “Readers Respond to Rousseau.”

“This typographical consciousness has disappeared now that books are mass-produced for a mass audience. In the eighteenth century they were made by hand. Every sheet of paper was produced individually by an elaborate procedure and differed from every other sheet in the same volume. Every letter, word, and line was composed according to an art that gave the artisan a chance to express his individuality. Books themselves were individuals, each copy possessing its own character. The reader of the Old Regime approached them with care, for he paid attention to the stuff of literature as well as its message. He would finger the paper in order to gauge its weight, translucence, and elasticity (a whole vocabulary existed to describe the esthetic qualities of paper, which usually represented at least half the manufacturing cost of a book before the nineteenth century.) He would study the design of the type, examine the spacing, check the register, evaluate the layout, and scrutinize the evenness of the printing. He would sample a book the way we might taste a glass of wine; for he looked at the impressions on the paper, not merely across them to their meaning. And once he possessed himself fully of a book, in all its physicality, he would settle down to read it.” (pp. 223-224)

March 3, 2009January 28, 2013

Smuggler’s Bible

For reasons unknown to me, there are a number of these late 18th C. French bindings that have been converted into smuggler’s bibles. The stamping on the front cover was done at a later date, and the inside of the textblock seems to have been edge glued, and the back flyleaf used to line the edges. The bottom is the back board pastedown. I always wonder what happened to the bulk of the text– thrown away or burned, most likely.

So if I am “reading” this book correctly, with little or no text, it is the materials and the structure of the binding that give it meaning. In a way, this book is a eloquent example of how a conservator approaches a book. Firstly, through the lens of the history of technology, it is the physical substrates that support and protect the text that are documented, analyzed and conserved. Secondly, we have not time, interest or are unable to read the language of most of the books we work on. Do we even need the text?

But this book also demonstrates how the brutal alteration of an artifact can distort our understanding of history. I’m very interested in late 18th C. French bookbinding, and even though there are many extant examples, each one that is lost distorts our understanding of the total production and subtle workshop variations. It is that it is very difficult to determine when this book was altered, so it gives the unscrupulous an easy excuse of saying they bought the book in this condition. The market currently values destroyed or altered books such as this more than an intact volume.

There is even a company called “Secret Storage Books” that currently makes new versions. If I were being more stringent with my own ethics, I guess I shouldn’t have purchased this book, since it encourages more of them to be made.

Octave Uzanne, writing in 1904, in The French Bookbinders of the Eighteenth Century writes: “‘Sham books’, simple wooden boxes, and sometimes mere mouldings, covered with gauffered and gold-tool leathers, with which they filled the empty shelves of a pretentious library, or with which they garnished the doors.” The books below, however are real books that have been made to resemble the sham books he talks about.

18th-french-cover

french-safe

Jane Eagan kindly sent this image of a similar book she owns.

eagan2

eagen-book2

On the 24th of March, 2009 I was watching Looney Tunes historic Chuck Jones animation, and from 1939 an 8 minute short titled “Sniffles and the Bookworm” featured a smuggler’s bible. Watch the book on the bottom right. I barely had time to grab my camera, so I missed a better shot earlier in the movie.

jones

jones2

February 2, 2009January 28, 2013

Old Books Stink!

Many of my clients talk about the smell of old books as being one of the aspects that attracts them to collecting.

In the 18th Century, M. Dudin in The Art of the Bookbinder and Gilder ends his treatise by recommending that the completed binding be perfumed. “Very few people seek this refinement for their books but there is nothing simpler than perfuming a book.” (86) He explains two methods, one by sponging the pages with perfume, the other leaving the book in a cupboard for a long period of time with an open bottle. Keep those noses going, fellow conservators, I would love to find an example of this.

Now Christopher Brosius, and his store CB I Hate Perfume, has bottled the smell. The scent is named “In The Library”, and here is part of his description.

“I love books, particularly old ones. I cannot pass a second hand bookshop and rarely come away without at least one additional volume. I now have quite a collection! Whenever I read, the start of the journey is always opening the book and breathing deeply. Don’t you find there are few things more wonderful than the smell of a much-loved book? Newly printed books certainly smell very different from older ones. The ink is so crisp. I’ve also noticed that books from different periods & different countries also have very different smells. And then there are the scents of different bindings: leather is marvelous of course but I find a peculiar pleasure in musty worn clothbound books as well. Perhaps just a hint of mildew! The main note in this scent was copied from one of my favorite books – I happened to find a signed first edition of this novel a few years ago in London. I was more than a little excited because there were only ever a hundred in the first place.” (From the CB I Hate Perfume Website)

I purchased a tiny, 2ml vial of this scent for about $12.

I’m not much of a perfume guy– it didn’t smell bad, but it didn’t smell like an old book either.

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