Illuminated Manuscripts: Hands on project 6 – medieval bookbinding

Coptic dos-a-dos; link stitch binding; limp vellum with wooden spine; model St Cuthbert; 18th century half binding with false raised bands

Picture above are some of the models I have made in workshops, and I thought I’d use them here.

For this week’s project I will do two bindings: a Byzantine binding with bi-axial sewing, something I’ve never done. For this I will use blank paper. Our project manuscript will be bound in a Coptic manner.

Byzantine binding:

Byzantine binding: Exposed linked sewing and endbands with board remnants. University of Canbridge Special Collections

According to Szirmai there are several methods of attaching the textblock to the boards, and I will use the most common method, which is to use the sewing thread to hinge the boards to the first quire (which is the same as in Coptic.). The sewing will be recessed. I will attach one fly leaf as a hooked leaf, to be pasted down on the board. I will attach the two halves with a link stitch. A thin linen cloth will be used as spine lining.

La imagen de arriba son algunos de los modelos que he hecho en talleres, y pensé que los usaría aquí.
Para el proyecto de esta semana haré dos encuadernaciones: una encuadernación bizantina con costura biaxial, algo que nunca he hecho. Para esto usaré papel en blanco. Nuestro manuscrito del proyecto estará vinculado de manera copta.

Encuardenacion bizantina:

Según Szirmai, hay varios métodos para unir el bloque de texto a los tableros, y utilizaré el método más común, que es usar el hilo de coser para articular los tableros al primer quire (que es lo mismo que en Coptic). La costura se empotrará. Adjuntaré una hoja de mosca como una hoja enganchada, para pegarla en el tablero. Adjuntaré las dos mitades con una puntada de enlace. Se utilizará un paño de lino fino como revestimiento del lado.

L’image ci-dessus est quelques-uns des modèles que j’ai réalisés dans des ateliers, et j’ai pensé les utiliser ici.

Pour le projet de cette semaine, je ferai deux reliures: une reliure byzantine avec couture bi-axiale, ce que je n’ai jamais fait. Pour cela, j’utiliserai du papier vierge. Le manuscrit de notre projet sera lié de manière copte.

Reliure byzantine:

Selon Szirmai, il existe plusieurs méthodes pour attacher le bloc de texte aux plats et j’utiliserai la méthode la plus courante, qui consiste à utiliser le fil à coudre pour articuler les plats au premier besoin (qui est le même qu’en copte). La couture sera en retrait. Je vais attacher une feuille de garde  comme une feuille crochue, à coller  à  l’interieur du plat. Je vais attacher les deux moitiés avec un point de lien. Une fine toile de lin sera utilisée comme doublure du dos.

1. Getting the boards ready:

Cut opposite grooves

Glue

Forms an edge groove

Press overnight

After letting dry overnight, I used lino cutting tools to define the grooves. After I used an awl to make the sewing holes in the board I made the grooves in which the sewing thread would lie.

Sewing the text block to the board.

I used herringbone sewing for this as it is a linked stitch; it will also fit in the cavity created in the spine of the gatherings. I have never done this sort of sewing before, this is one of the reason why I chose it. As with coptic books, the board is attached to the first gathering or quire. However when you attach the subsequent quire, unlike the coptic, you must still return to the board. It is only with the third gathering or quire that you start the herringbone pattern. This is done because you go down two quires to wrap the thread, thus making it a bit more solid. At each end is the change over station and you do a kettle stitch as per usual. If you are not a bookbinder you won’t know what that means, but once I realised this it all became clear in my head.

Después de dejar secar durante la noche, utilicé herramientas de corte de linóleo para definir los surcos. Después de usar un punzón para hacer los agujeros de costura en el tablero, hice las ranuras en las que se colocaría el hilo de coser.

Coser el bloque de texto al tablero.

Utilicé la costura en espiga para esto, ya que es una puntada unida; También cabe en la cavidad creada en el lomo de los cuadernos. Nunca antes había hecho este tipo de costura, esta es una de las razones por las que lo elegí. Al igual que con los libros cópticos, el tablero se adjunta a lel primero cuaderno.  Sin embargo, cuando adjuntas la secuencia posterior, a diferencia del cóptico, aún debes volver al tablero. Es solo con el tercero cuaderno o quire que comienza el patrón en espiga. Esto se hace porque baja dos necesidades para envolver el hilo, lo que lo hace un poco más sólido. En cada extremo está el cambio de estación y se hace una cadena como de costumbre. Si no eres un encuadernador, no sabrás lo que eso significa, pero una vez que me di cuenta de esto, todo se aclaró en mi cabeza.

Après avoir laissé sécher toute la nuit, j’ai utilisé des outils de coupe lino pour définir les rainures. Après avoir utilisé un poinçon pour faire les trous de couture dans le plat, j’ai fait les rainures dans lesquelles le fil à coudre se trouverait.  

Coudre le bloc de texte au plat

J’ai utilisé la couture à chevrons pour cela car c’est un point lié; il s’insérera également dans la cavité créée dans lle dos des cahiers. Je n’ai jamais fait ce genre de couture auparavant, c’est une des raisons pour lesquelles je l’ai choisi. Comme pour les livres coptes, le plat est attaché au premier cahier. Cependant, lorsque vous attachez le quire suivant, contrairement au copte, vous devez toujours retourner au plat. Ce n’est qu’au troisième cahier que vous démarrez le motif à chevrons. Cela se fait parce que vous descendez deux cahiers pour envelopper le fil, le rendant ainsi un peu plus solide. À chaque extrémité se trouve la station de changement et vous faites une chainette. Si vous n’êtes pas relieur, vous ne saurez pas ce que cela signifie, mais une fois que j’ai réalisé cela, tout est devenu clair dans ma tête.

News: after reading Richard Horton’s amazing Booksewings by Hand, I have realised that the sewing was actually looping packed recessed link stitch! Herringbone is similar but not the same.

Noticias: ¡después de leer las increíbles Booksewings by Hand de Richard Horton, me di cuenta de que la costura en realidad era una puntada de enlace empotrada en bucle! La espiga es similar pero no igual.
Nouvelles: après avoir lu  Booksewings by Hand de Richard Horton, je me suis rendu compte que la couture bouclait en fait un point encastré! Le chevron est similaire mais pas le même.

Byzantine sewing:

I used 2 different colours of paper so that I could see how the two halves were joined together. Each half is sewn to the board and then joined with link stiches in the middle.

marking the sewing stations

v cut in the spine

both halves cut

mark board

drill holes in boards

using lino cutting tool to make channels

channels made

sewing the board and first quire

The sewing begins with the first quire being attached to the board. At the third quire the link stitch starts. Because of the V cut, the stitching is recessed.

Thread in channels

the needle going under section

needle going under section or quire

link stitch begins

two halves

stitching the halves together

detail of linking of halves

finished text block

Once this sewing is done spine lining of mull and linen is put on spine;this is to reinforce the spine. This will be a flat spine.

mull on spine

The difference between coptic and byzantine sewing is when to do the link stitch. It appears that in the Byzantine, the link is done 3 quires down, whereas in the Coptic it is done under the immediate previous quire. Here are the two finished bindings:

L: Coptic with headband R: Byzantine with headband and lining

 

Here is a sequence for the Coptic sewing:

text and boards

using a telephone book and a jog to prick holes

all holes made

adding board to first quire

adding second quire

under the previous quire

bone fold after each quire sewn

finished

adding the last board

Endbands -tranchefiles – capitelo(?)*

Collection of Byzantine endbands – University of Cambridge Special Collections

This is my favourite stage of bookbinding.There are such a variety and yes they are time consuming, but oh so satisfying to make. Despite the time constraints I did the endbands on the heads of both the Byzantine and the Coptic.

Byzantine headband

Coptic headband

Here is a sequence for the Byzantine headband. I have never done this before, so it is not that good looking. I looked at various books including :Headbands and how to work them by Greenfield and Hille, and really good basic videos by Robert and Sherif.  These will give you some good basics.

I made a half cover for the Byzantine. Normally with the Coptic I would have covered the boards first before sewing, but I am pretending they are wooden boards and I wouldn’t cover them.

Here is the sequence for adding leather to the Byzantine block:

folded over corners

Corners with tongue

head covered in leather

leather in the grooves

The endleaves are sometimes called the pastedown. Technically the endleaves are the leaves at either end of the book, usually loose. The pastedown is the sheet that is pasted onto the board. It may have been under the leather cover, but more usually is it over the leather cover.

Glueing out the endleaf

Cover with pasted endleaf

Pastedown and first page of the Coptic

 

Both books now finished:

Coptic and Byzantine

L: Coptic with headband R: Byzantine with headband

That’s it!

This was by far the most enjoyable part of the course. Even though I am a bookbinder, I had never done a Byzantine binding nor its headband. NEither am I very good at Cptic headbands. So this was  good challenge for me.

Here is a short movie about how I learned to make a model St Cuthbert Gospel book in 2017.

Thanks for reviewing for the course Decipering Illuminated Manuscripts.

Here is an image of a Romanesque binding:

Romanesque binding as described in https://heraldry.sca.org/kwhss/2017/The%20Art%20of%20Bookbinding.pdf

We can see the herringbone sewing on double supports that are laced into the wooden boards, as well as the double endbands.

 

The bindings of Paris printer Simon de Colines (Simoneum Colinarium)

This is a book blog, but for some time now I have been distracted with title pages, historiated capitals and pagination that form parts of the book.

While researching watermarks, and having a hard time finding paper makers amongst all the photos of watermarks, I had the thought that if I could relate the watermarks to the printers we could find out from where the papers came.

What has become apparent to me is that it was a very small world and everyone knew each other or were related in some fashion. The confusing aspect of printing is that sometimes they latinised their names and sometimes they didn’t. So a printer may have had many variant names.

Simon de Colines, or Simoneum Colinarium was an active Paris printer between 1520 and 1546, one of the first of the Renaissance. He worked exclusively for the University of Paris between 150 and 1546. Colines used elegant roman and italic types and a Greek type, with accents, that were superior to their predecessors. These are now called French old-style, a style that remained popular for over 200 years and revived in the early 20th century. Some of his typefaces have been the basis for many  later typefaces,  such as Garamond.

Let’s first examine bindings of his texts: “Orontii Finei Delphinatis, regii mathematicarvm professoris, de mundi sphaera, siue cosmographia, primave astronomiae parte.” Printed in Paris 1542.
RB 520 F495 (NLA)

This is a half binding but the corners are missing, more than likely a rebind. Leather spine with pastepaper sides, marbled paper endsheets.

“Lucanus,” RB Fitz 148 (NLA) Printed  Paris 1543 is a full calk binding with blind tooling on cover. It has recycled parchment manuscript as pastedown, and as you can see, sewn on 3 supports

and  “E Kaine diatheke” RB CLI 3106 (NLA) Printed Paris 1534 is also a rebind. It’s a reback, meaning that the spine (or back) has been redone. The spine panels are fully gold tooled and there is evidence of gold tooling on the bands. The edges are well gilt and it has double colour sewn endbands.

I am sorry some of these pictures are blurry; I think I need new glasses!

In addition to his work as a printer,  de Colines worked as an editor, publisher, and punchcutter. During his lifetime, he published over 700 separate editions (almost 4% of books published in 16th-century Paris). He used rabbits, satyrs, and philosophers as his pressmark. He married the widow of Henri Etienne, with whom he had worked, training his stepson Robert Estienne (Stephanus as he became known).

As with all printers he had variant names: Simonem Colinaeum,

Maybe now we can look at some title pages and some historiated capitals

I’m trying to see if the same letters were used in different books. De Colines printed in Greek and Latin. In the books I have seen, the large historiated capitals are found mainly in the first few sections. The next sections may contain factotums or much smaller capitals. The first volumes were paid much more attention than later volumes, where there were sometimes no historiated capitals at all. In the Orontii blank spaces were left for the later printing of larger capitals, which never eventuated.

But for this period, this dotted background is very typical.

Many printers also have what known as a printer’s device, a brand or logo. Often it gets passed down to the various people who take on the printing shop. Sometimes  during a printer’s lifetime a printer may have several devices at play.

 Latin motto TEMPUS (Time) HANC ACIEM SOLA RETUNDIT VIRTUS is translated “virtue alone withstands this blade”. Note the forelock on Time–so that one may seize Time by the forelock.

Another device is rabbits with the initial SDC. I have not yet found this one. See below:

Image courtesy POP Provenance Online Project  Woodcut for Simon de Colines device

Till next time

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About a book: Annali ecclesiastici tratti da quelli del Cardinal Baronio per Odorico Rinaldi

What is this book? This is what I found:

Full plate title page

2 volumes of 4 volume set

I went looking for this book because I was searching for Vitale Mascardi’s alphabet. I had seen one other book, and it only had one historiated capital in it. I went to check, in case I had gotten it wrong, but couldn’t find anymore within the pages. The title page is signed: Daniel Widman FET. I imagine it means he sculptured the plates. The CERL Thesaurus has a Daniel Widman as student of philosophy in Ingolstadt. How many Daniel Widmans could there be at that time?

This one had two capitals:

H

C

P

Ok, 3, but I already had the “H” so it doesn’t count. After the first few pages, he dispenses with niceties and just uses bold type.

Mascardi was known to have printed books in the vernacular Italian; I’d say quite a feat in the mid 1600s. The rest of the book has italic and regular print. Printers out there please forgive my lack of correct vocabulary; I am still learning.

Before we go on about the ecclesiastical annals he printed, let’s look at the binding. In all the books I have examined, I don’t think I ever found primary and secondary endbands on the one book. I mean, I might have, but never noticed. Look here:

Endband with bead on foredge

Primary and secondary endbands visible together

Tie-downs of the primary

Seeing this, I now understand the practicality of having  primary and secondary endbands. If you have ever struggled with the core remaining still on the edge of the spine as you wind your threads, struggling the once with winding around a core of the primary allows you to create beautiful design with the secondary. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? But imagine how much time this must take? So in the mid 1600s, if we say that an edition run was roughly a thousand printed sheet sets, how many sets would have been bound? This must have been done lovingly, or at least with a great degree of care.

Then of course on this binding we get to see the linings: full transverse linings made from printer’s waste or bookbinding recycling? Will we ever know?

 

And besides the recycled linings, you can also see the sewing structure.

Getting back to the book, what’s it about? Twelves centuries of the history of  the Church. Written in vernacular Italian, was it meant to educate the people?  I went to Wikipedia to educate myself. Not a far fetch that its title page plate was engraved by a philosophy student.

Let’s go back to the previous book:

Antiquae urbis splendor, hoc est praecipua eiusdem templa, amphitheatra, theatra, circi, naumachiae, arcus triumphales, maunscles aliaque sumptuosiora aedificia, pompae item triumphalis et colossaearum imaginum descriptio

This is a delightful landscape book, limp vellum binding, filled with images , as described in its title, of encampments, buildings, cities. Printed by Mascardi, with hardly any text. And one historiated capital. Engravings sculpted by Giacomo Laurus,  engraver and stub publisher(?), according to CERL.

Before I leave you, take a look at these headpieces which he repeatedly used. No ther factotums, fleurons or other ornaments. (I am trying to dazzle you with new found jargon from the glossary at the Fleuron Database)

I am collecting information for another project……

In the next post I’ll show you some watermarks….

Comments, opinions, ideas always welcomed.

Historic binding structures: a photo essay

In my previous post I touched very briefly on the books I had been examining. I thought I’d just provide more pictures so you could get a better idea. I think there is something fascinating about discovering that bookbinding really hasn’t changed much at all in 400 years.

RB CLI 4283 – The institution laws and ceremonies of the most noble order of the garter, 1672.
This is one of the first books I ever saw in the rarebook stack, and what captured my eye was the illuminated script on the spine lining.

What an interesting lining

 

Speckled edges black and red

Composition of a cover

While dusting the books I couldn’t help open them of course. Interestingly enough many old papers have stood the test in time, not only in its robustness but also remaining pristine, not discolouring like many old books.

Here are some examples of paper:

RB CLI 3273 – Hamlet or 13 plays performed at Drury Lane and Covent Garden Theatres

one of four different watermarks in Hamlet

Plate from a collection of 13 plays performed at Covent Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RBf 483 H588 Hesychii Lexicon, 1746

RBf208 B669 Vol4- Bonaventura Opera, 1589

I look at these pictures a lot because this must have been painstaking work. Note the beading on the spine side and the many tie downs.

Bonaventura Opera – Italian endbands with beading on spine, double supports like sewn

 

Note the recycled bit of hand written script

I am partial to sewing; I find it quite relaxing.

RBf CLI 3865 double support link sewn, 1628

RB Misc 3194 Conciones quadragesimales 1701
double supports sewn as one

I do have many more photos, but it is hard to chose from them.  You might just need to visit the NLA and get them brought up from the rare book stack.

Discovering historical bindings

Bonaventura Opera – Italian endbands with beading on spine

 

In my daily line of work I don’t get to be creative and neither do I get to see many books of great rarity. However, over the last year and a half I’ve had the privilege of doing some dusting in the Rare Book stack at the National Library. You would be amazed at the amount of dust that can accumulate on the edges of books!

4 weeks worth of dust

Just recently I bought Jane Greenfield‘s ABC of Bookbinding. It contains  drawings of historical structures; it has made a  complicated chain of technical events relatively simple to understand. And it has helped me understand the  interesting discoveries I’ve made in the stack. I can now also use some of the knowledge I gained at Prof Pickwoad’s course at the London Rare Book Summer school, entitled European bookbinding 1450-1830. Here is an example of comb lining:

Comb lining

 

I never thought I’d see one. I was only able to discover the full extent of this lining because its cover was in a state of disrepair. The lining was made from old hand written parchment, probably recycled from another book or a workshop reject.

recycled parchment lining

more handwritten recycled material for guards

It’s one thing to read about recycling of historical materials, it’s another to find it.

I am particularly interested in endbands, those decorative bits that sit on the head and tail of the book.

 

Double endband

 

tied down through parchment lining

endband tied down through linen reinforcement

 

Sewing endbands gives me particular satisfaction; it’s a bit of  a Zen thing. The silk or cotton that you try to sew around a cord core hides the edge of the spine while you try to make a pretty pattern at the same time. This is what I made:

Endbands as taught in Fine Bookbinding

 

After viewing some 60 photos of old books someone just asked me this morning if I had any shots of how modern books were made. I had to think for a while. What is striking is that bookbinding as a craft has not changed much in over 400 years. Sure people have become innovative, and fine binders today work with care and precision.

Using old news papers as spine linings

This is not to say that the binders of old didn’t, but i do believe that as printing made it easy for  books to be mass produced, binders were under pressure to keep up with demand, and may be care was not such a premiun need or product for most people.

Last year I presented 2 papers on the books in the rare stack. At the New Zealand Book Symposium I focused on how I applied learned knowledge to identify bindings of the books in the stack, and at the Bibliographic society of Australia and New Zealand conference I shared my excitement at the discoveries I had made.

recycled parchment used as comb lining

To be frank, I don’t have an affinity with laced in covers. I quite like case binding and simplified binding. However I do like the look of seeing the cords laced into the covers, something modern binders try to hide.

two supports sewn as one

I have hundreds of photos that I could share; but I have neither the time nor the space to do so. What I would really like to do is spend time in the stack cataloguing a sample set of books, describing their bindings in details. But alas, that is not my job!

I’ll leave you with this beauty I found:

 

Laced in cover, but stitched with alum tawed tongs?

If I make any more discoveries I’ll let you know.