Medieval Bookbinding

The monastic scriptorium, and later the secular workshop, were devoted largely to the copying, translation, and creation of book-length manuscripts, both clerical and secular. These manuscripts were often done for wealthy nobles or merchants, and such works were usually illuminated, some quite elaborately. Liberal quantities of rare and expensive pigments, gold, and sometimes (rarely, because it tarnishes) silver went into their making. Illuminated manuscripts became one of the ultimate status symbols of the middle ages and early renaissance, and were designed to be as durable as possible, while retaining their decorative and practical value.

Around 200 A.D., large sheets of papyrus were being folded in half before being written upon, thereby doubling the number of immediately accessible pages. When a number of these folded pages were attached to one another at the fold, a book or codex (from the Latin caudex, or tree trunk, referring to the composition of the first coverings) was created. Such a book, made from several single folded sheets, is called a folio. Folios have the disadvantage of requiring a set of stitches for every folded sheet (i.e., for every four pages); this accumulation of overlapping stitches causes an extreme rounding of the spine in books of any length. In addition, sewing through single sheets promotes ripping of the papyrus or paper between the stitches whenever a page is turned.

These problems may be alleviated by placing several folded sheets one inside the other to form groups of pages called sections (these are sometimes referred to as signatures; however, signature is a modern term for a large printed sheet of pages in multiples of four which, when properly folded and cut, yields a book section). Two sheets together form a quarto, four sheets together an octavo section. Sections are much less susceptible to tearing when sewn, and since the same amount of thread can now bind twice or four times as many sheets, the rounding of the book's spine is lessened. Papyrus is not ideally suited for books made up of folded sheets, because it does not lend itself well to repeated folding. The next step in the development of books was the adoption of vellum, or thin, finely scraped and cured animal hide, as the writing surface. Vellum is usually made from calfskin or kidskin, and as such is a special category of parchment, which term encompasses any writing surface made from animal hide. Not only is vellum a fabulous medium for the scrivener's art, it can be made quite flexible and resilient; indeed, a number of codices from the Ottonian and Carolingian periods have survived in a more or less usable form to the present day.

To protect the fragile and devilishly expensive manuscripts, thick wooden coverings were first devised. These coverings were simply two thick slabs of wood or bark (see codex, above) between which the vellum sheets were sandwiched. Board thickness was next reduced, and the boards attached, first to one another and later to the vellum sheets as well. This technique afforded not only excellent protection, but if properly executed allowed the book to lie flat when closed, yet permitted the pages to fall open in a graceful arc when opened.

Once the fundamental framework for codex binding was established, coverings were made from cloth, leather, precious metals, gems, ivory, and any of a number of further materials. Innovations such as endpapers, leather joints, split boards, french joints, and so on continually improved the bookbinder's art until the advent of the mass-produced book, when hand binding went into a decline from which it has only comparatively recently begun to recover.

On the following pages I will present a technique called binding on raised cords, which was a popular and widespread method for binding manuscripts until the nineteenth century.

MEDIEVAL BOOKBINDING:

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16