Potter 1993
Potter, Esther. “The London Bookbinding Trade: From Craft to Industry.” The Library 15.4 (1993): 259–280. Web.
development of industrial bookbinding driven by increased literacy and regular supply of books with same format, like the Bible (bible societies) (265), as well as technology change in the early 19th cent.
259: Mechanization came late to bookbinding. The first machine was not introduced until 1827 and the major developments came in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It was in fact the change in the structure of the trade that made it economically feasible to develop machinery. What the binders were adapting to was the growth in the output of books and the emergence of the publisher. 262: Hitherto the principal customer for bookbinding was the private owner who had bought his books in sheets or in some temporary covering such as wrappers or boards, and the binder would receive single copies from an individual customer…. When a publisher had the whole edition in his hands, and especially if his policy was to sell to the trade copies ready bound, the binders would be receiving books in large batches. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century a bookseller’s shop would have shelves of novels and belles-lettres in paper covered boards for the customer to have rebound to his own taste, and shelves of directories and such like in simple sheep bindings. This move towards more standardized bindings was still very far from the uniform binding of a whole edition.
Growth of unskilled labor (increased demand and developing technology) supplanting the traditional role of journeyman, also the increasing specialization of parts of the trade
266: It was not only the Bible binders who were expanding. By the second decade of the century the publisher was no longer a rare phenomenon and the binders were learning to adjust to edition binding. The coming of the annuals put fresh pressure on them. In November 1822 Ackermann introduced the Forget Me Not: a Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1823, and for the next twenty years or so the market was deluged every Christmas with these annuals and gift books. 267: The annuals had other influences on the trade as well. One or two edge gilders had started working for the trade at the very end of the eighteenth century. The rise of the annuals left edge gilding securely established as an independent trade. 268: For technical innovation we must look to the trade binders [vs craft binders]. Bookcloth was devised in the early 1820s by Archibald Leighton for William Pickering. It was not the first cloth to be used for binding. Velvet, for example, had been popular with the Tudor monarchs and in the first quarter of the nineteenth century one or two binders were specializing in silk bindings. The Pickering/Leighton cloth was at first intended for temporary bindings, a smarter alternative to paper-covered boards, and the binding was referred to as ‘cloth boards’; but as the quality of the cloth was improved it was developed into a cheap, practical and attractive alternative to leather, and was a significant step in improving productivity in binding. The breakthrough in the evolution of publisher’s cloth into a permanent and attractive binding came in 1832 with the discovery, again by the inventive Archibald Leighton, that bookcloth could be blocked in blind or in gold by machine.
Example of the cloth and gilding innovation: vol 1 of Byron’s works (London: Murray, 1832) Case binding
270: Casing was not unknown but it had not been popular, although in the late 1820s more cloth cases are found, as for example on the Cadell publication of the Waverley Novels, forty-eight volumes, 1830, which was issued in a very large edition. Casing increased dramatically the speed of the forwarding process, although it did nothing to change the folding and sewing, and consequently the ratio of women to men increased. 275: At the beginning of the century binding was divided into two main categories. The West End binders living in the Strand and in Westminster, and their journeymen wore long black glazed aprons. They made fine bindings for private clients and among them were some of the largest binders, Charles Lewis, Charles Hering, and John Mackinlay. The trade binders who worked for the booksellers lived in Holborn and the City and their journeymen wore green flannel aprons. Butt he dividing line was flexible. The West End binders would put part of an edition (perhaps the large paper copies) into morocco for a bookseller and the trade binders could, and did produce fine bindings for private customers. 276: The growth of edition binding changed the balance. The West End binders continued to work in much the same way as they had been doing at the beginning of the century. They grew somewhat in size but not greatly. The main growth was in trade binding and it was accomplished more by an increase in the size of the firms than in their number. There were still plenty of small jobs to be done for the booksellers, and small workshops abounded, but blocked case binding required machinery and a large scale operation to make it economic. Bookbinding is not easily mechanized and by the middle of the century the only machines in general use were the rolling mill or a hydraulic press, the blocking press, a guillotine for cutting edges, and a board cutter which squared the boards. There was nothing to help with folding and sewing, rounding and backing, or case making. [Edition binding and case binding] Such developments greatly increased the speed of production and so enlarged the binder’s capacity and at the same time reduced his costs… The other side of this coin was the steady erosion of the skill and status of the journeyman. 280: By the middle of the century edition binding was normal; publishers’ bindings were largely case-bound cloth. Though wholesale binding was still far from being mechanized it was organized on mass production lines to match the growing industrialization of printing and publishing. From the late eighteenth century the bookbinders had successfully adapted their methods to the emerging need for edition binding, slowly at first but after about 1800 at a rapidly accelerating pace. Until 1820 it had been done with traditional techniques. In the 1820s and still more in the 1830s expansion was aided by the development of book cloth and the introduction of the first machines. Cloth casing transformed book binding from a cratft to an industry and separated it from bespoke binding which remained a craft.
