Chapter 7

26.Bound by Miss Maude Nathan.

And what is to be said of binding as a means of livelihood? Experience has shown that properly trained women can do as good binding as men, though not upon large and heavy work, and if they do it well enough some of them can earn a fair wage, while if they fail to reach a high standard they had better for all practical purposes let it alone. But to hold out any inducement to the woman who really needs bread-and-butter to take up binding as a lucrative employment, as is done in some quarters, should be characterized with the severity it deserves. Many women need but an addition to their income, and to such, if they are willing to incur the expense of training and plant, and if they realize the experimental nature of the undertaking, binding may be recommended as a sufficiently pleasant occupation. Whether financial success comes, however, or not, must depend upon the amount of work turned out, on the originality and finish with which it is executed, and last, but not least in importance, on the finding of a market. Booksellers are now so overstocked with so-called artistic bindings of moderate merit, and it may also be said of moderate price, that they are not eager to accept those of average quality at the more than average price that many women expect their work to command. A market can always be found for the best of everything; but as far as bindings are concerned it is certainly at present overstocked with the second best, and attention may well be directed to other branches of decorative work. There are more than enough half-trained workers, both male and female; and it would be a most undesirable result of what in itself is so eminently desirable—the opening of the artistic crafts to women—if there were to be a great deal of inferior work put into circulation obviously from the hands of those who have never left theamateur stage. Women make a mistake, too, in specializing in the production of decorated bindings. It is no doubt a right principle to take the everyday things of life and decorate them rather than invent useless ones for the purpose. It has, however, this disadvantage, that it has now become almost impossible to get any of these homely things made with the severe simplicity of mere purposefulness. If one does not want the useless things, at least one need not buy them; but it seems hard that the necessary ones should become thecorpora vileon which the professed decorator exercises his too frequently disordered imagination. One is unfortunately as little likely nowadays to find a plain pepper-pot as one is to find a bound book on which there is not some flower sprawling over its cover in a meaningless attempt to be Japanese in sentiment. We want to get rid of the affectation of contorted pattern and have more of the plain things of life plainly made. As far as bindings are concerned, in addition to thismuch-desired simplicity, there is, as has been said above, far more important and useful work to be done than pattern making, in the repairing and preserving of old books and records. An instance of this may be seen at the present moment in an extensive matter undertaken by Mr. Cockerell for the Middlesex County Council. A large number of their ancient Sessions Books, many of them crumbling to pieces, are being put in a condition for reference, the whole business of mending being done by women under the direction formerly of Miss Wilkinson and now of Miss M‘Ewan both pupils of Mr. Cockerell. Again, many more women might adventure starting a business in the country or in a provincial town. In America there is hardly a centre where there is any interest shown in books which has not a woman binder who has probably been trained by Mr. Cobden-Sanderson. We are glad to notice that Miss Adams has a bindery at Broadway, that Miss Paget is at Farnham doing good honest work of a comparatively simple nature, and that Miss Philpot has established herself at Cambridge. Space forbids more than a few illustrations from the work of women binders, numerous as they now are. Miss MacColl’s books have for some time excited interest both on account of the character of her brother’s designs and her manner of executing them by means of a small wheel, which is an attempt to overcome the restrictions of the finisher’s ordinary methods. Miss Nathan, Miss Pattinson and Miss Stebbing are all doing well-considered and tasteful work on sound principles. Of those at work in Scotland we need only mention the names of Miss Jessie King, Miss McClure and Miss Jane F. Hamilton, Miss Alice Gairdner and Miss Agnes Watson of Glasgow, as their work has recently been specially dealt with in a paper by Mr. Lewis F. Day.

27.Bound by Miss Woolrich.

28.Bound by Miss Philpot.

In conclusion, it is necessary to keep in mind that binding is but one of the sub-crafts that contribute to the production of books. Of late each of these has pursued its own often faulty ideals regardless of its relationship to the other contributory crafts. The paper-maker, the printer and the binder would be more likely to work intelligently if they had some mutual knowledge of each other’s needs and limitations. The habit has been growing for some time of looking on the binding of a book as the most important thing in connexion with it. But the binder of the future, if his work is to be an effective contribution to decorative art, must look on the book itself as the unit of interest, the thought, embodied in typography and illustration, constituting a whole to which in the decorated cover he adds, not an essential part, but as it were the crown or coping-stone.

29.Bound by Marius Michel.

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