Bib-li-op-e-gis-tic (Pertaining to the art of binding books.—Dibdin)

Crafts-Hobbies > Book Printing & Binding

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Bib-li-op-e-gis-tic (Pertaining to the art of binding books.—Dibdin) to which is appended a glossary of some terms used in the craft.

Bibliopegistic

The craft of the bookbinder is older than that of the printer. Quoting from Mr. Brander Matthews:

“Perhaps the first bookbinder was the humble workman who collected the baked clay tiles on which the Assyrians wrote their laws; and he was a bookbinder also who prepared a protecting cylinder to guard the scrolls of papyrus on which Vergil, and Horace, and Martial had written their verses.”

Modern art in bookbinding began in Italy in the fifteenth century. The invention of printing had so multiplied books that the work got out of the hands of the monks, and workmen from other trades were pressed into service, bringing with them their skill in working leather, as well as their tools, and designs which they had previously used to decorate their work.

At this time the libraries were shelves, so inclined, as to allow of the books lying on their sides, inviting their decoration. At first the embellishment was suggested or influenced by the work in the volume, and very often there would be found on the cover, repetition of the typographic ornaments used by the printer.

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