My World of Bibliophile Binding

By Kerstin Tini Miura

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Dec 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520346666

Book preview

MY WORLD OF

BIBLIOPHILE BINDING

MY WORLD OF

BIBLIOPHILE

BINDING

Kerstin Tini Miura

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley • Los Angeles • London

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

Copyright • 1984 by The Regents of the University of California Photography by Kodai Miura.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Miura, Kerstin Tini.

My world of bibliophile binding.

1. Bookbinding. I. Title.

Z266.M55 1983 686.3 82-13511

ISBN 0-520-04814-8

Printed in the United States of America and Japan

123456789

For my husband Einen,

who made this book happen.

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

TECHNIQUES

THE ASSIGNMENT

READING THE BOOK

PRELIMINARY SKETCHES

SEPARATING THE COVER FROM THE TEXT BLOCK

HARDCOVER BINDING

SEPARATION OF THE SECTIONS

PREPARATION OF THE COVER

REPAIR OF LEAVES

PROTECTING THE ILLUSTRATIONS

SELECTION OF THE FLYLEAF

PREPARING THE TEMPORARY SECTION

PRESSING

TRIMMING

COLLATING

PLACEMENT OF THE BINDING CORDS

THE SEWING

HOLDING DOWN THE SPINE

PREPARATION OF THE MILLBOARD FOR THE COVERS

THE GLUING OF THE SPINE

ROUNDING OF THE SPINE

THE BACKING

ATTACHING THE COVERS TO THE TEXT BLOCK

TRIMMING THE EDGES

DECORATION OF THE EDGES

CAPPING

SEWING THE HEADBANDS

FIXING THE MILLBOARD COVERS

PREPARATION OF THE SPINE

FINAL TREATMENT OF THE MILLBOARD COVERS

BACK-CORNERING

THE BRISTOL BOARD INLAY FOR THE SPINE

PARING THE LEATHER

COVERING THE BOOK WITH LEATHER

THE COVER DESIGN IN FULL SCALE

REMOVING THE TEMPORARY SECTIONS

THE EXECUTION OF THE COVER DESIGN

GOLD TOOLING

THE ENDPAPERS AND DOUBLURES

LETTERING THE TITLE (TITLING)

THE CHEMISE

THE SLIPCASE

THE PROTECTIVE SLIPCASE

DROP BACK BOX TYPE A

DROP BACK BOX TYPE B

POLISHING THE LEATHER

THE FINAL CHECK

THE SIGNING

THE DELIVERY

LIST OF BOOKS

GENERAL INDEX

FOREWORD

During the last twenty years or so we have witnessed a massive revival of the crafts. The main reason for this, clearly, is to be found in the increasingly sterile and unfulfilling lives a great many people are forced to lead in offices and factories with no rewarding tangible results. Some are fulfilled to the extent that they know they are doing a vital and useful job, but even so many of them still feel the basic human urge to create objects with their hands. In most cases, if this activity is to be no more than a pastime, simple crafts that can be mastered in a few weeks are taken up, and even these can provide therapeutic pleasure and relaxation. Some bolder spirits tackle the major crafts such as calligraphy, printing, cabinetmaking, and so on, and experience the deep satisfaction as well as the frustrations these inevitably involve. One such craft is bookbinding, which has unique appeal for many reasons. It is unusual in that it is not an end in itself, but has the important primary purpose of preserving the book on which the binding has been built. Books have markedly variable physical characteristics, so if both the book and the binding are to function satisfactorily as an entity these variables must be taken into account when the binding is planned, and it is in this aspect of the craft that many of the subtleties and problems are to be found. The making of a binding involves forty to fifty distinct operations, depending on its elaboration, many of which to some extent depend for their success on the satisfactory completion of the preceding ones. The types of basic structure that can be employed by the binder are numerous, and there are many variations of structural details that can be used for functional or decorative effect. Bindings involve the use of paper, millboard, leather, vellum, adhesives, cloth, silk, and other materials of which there are different kinds and grades of quality, and all these materials have different working qualities and life expectancies. In addition to this, as a complicating factor, some materials are made wet as part of the binding processes, so they stretch and contract, often to different lengths and widths, and as they are used on either side of the covers, a misjudgment in their use can cause too much warping, either inward or outward, and thus seriously mar the binding aesthetically and functionally. Decorative techniques include gold tooling, blind tooling (without gold), colored tooling, inlaying and onlaying a wide variety of materials, sculpturing the boards, cutting, molding, and staining leather in many ways, and the use of metal clasps and protective or decorative fittings. To produce a successful binding that functions well and is in balance and scale with the book, that is precise and accurate in all its details, well designed in a manner that is in sympathy with the atmosphere and subject of the book, and is contained in a perfectly fitting box or slipcase with chemise, calls for many years of training and dedicated application. These are the qualities we find in the remarkable display of virtuosity throughout My World of Bibliophile Binding, a display that, incidentally, demonstrates that exciting visual effects can be achieved without straying far from conventional techniques.

One must reiterate that bookbinding design in many countries, including France, is sadly underrecognized, and one cannot avoid the feeling that if some of the same designs were painted on paper or canvas public acclaim would be greater. It is an illogical and anomalous situation when paintings are discussed by art critics in the public press and on radio and television and command very high prices, whereas designs of seemingly comparable merit, executed with a greater variety of techniques in expensive binding materials by very highly skilled craftspeople over, one would have thought, a longer period, are almost totally ignored by the popular press and generally realize much lower prices. There are, however, signs that craft bookbinding is being taken more seriously as a creative medium.

We have a fair number of national and university libraries that commission and collect bindings along with some discerning collectors, though there are too few of them. Several years ago I wrote that in the long term it would not be in the best interests of the craft if it were suddenly to take off, because much in bindings is hidden, certainly a good deal more so than in most crafted objects, so charlatans would flourish and eventually bring discredit to the whole field. It remains my view that slow growth, or even no expansion at all, would be preferable to a sudden boom in which it would become the thing to collect expensive bindings, irrespective of a genuine and knowledgable interest in bookbinding or the book arts.

Although the number of craft binders engaged in fine work is now but a small fraction of the thousands who labored early this century in England alone, the craft is, in some respects, in a much healthier state now than formerly. Whereas at one time the bulk of the huge output of fine bindings was produced by teams of people, so that five or six craftsmen in a firm would work on each binding, and the physical suitability of the binding to the book and the chemical quality of the materials were not matters of prime concern, most of the finest of today’s bindings are produced by one person, with perhaps the help of a professional edge-gilder. Even in France, where subdivision of labor has always been most strongly in favor, there is an increasing number who carry out all the processes themselves, though this is sometimes more for reasons of economy than principle because the self-employed specialists are expensive. Those who adhere to the time-honored practice of engaging several specialists, including someone who does nothing but pare leather, argue that only by these means can the highest possible technical standards be achieved and that customers should not be offered less than these peaks of excellence. Certainly, such a system can and does produce bindings of astonishing technical accomplishment on the Continent, and the work can be enjoyed on that level. A great many collectors, however, appreciate the work of the single designer-bookbinder, knowing that the design and the whole of the work are the achievement of just one person. Kerstin Tini Miura is an outstanding example of the accomplished independent crafts woman. Bom in Germany in 1940, she had the good fortune to have a teacher of art and art history for a father. In her late teens she embarked on a three-year course of study of bookbinding and design in Kiel and Flensburg, at the end of which her examination bindings were chosen as the best in West Germany. This was followed by a year with Hugo Feller in Switzerland, and then another year of study in the Royal Bindery in Stockholm. In the mid-1960s she spent a year at the famed École Estienne in Paris, and then established her own bindery in Stockholm. In 1976 her cosmopolitan lifestyle took her to Tokyo where she reestablished her bindery. Throughout this book we see the results of Miura’s methodical and highly disciplined training which is typical of the Continental approach. Bearing in mind that she arrived in Tokyo with no equipment (nearly everything had to be ordered from Europe) and has worked with her husband, Einen, in cultural isolation, so to speak, with almost no day-to-day contact with others who have similar interests or experience, she has been extremely prolific, especially as there have been television appearances and exhibitions to arrange. Einen Miura, though not trained as a binder, has labored unremittingly to promote her work and has helped with the papermarbling.

As is inevitable where design is concerned, there will be some for whom Kerstin Tini Miura’s work holds no special appeal, as difficult as that is to believe. Most will surely agree that the display here presented is very exciting. The diversity of styles, including Japanese influence, is impressive and demonstrates her respect for each author. Not for her the simple solution of using variations on a single theme. A striking feature of many of the bindings is the oleographs that are distinctly her own and very successfully complement her cover designs. Of all books about modern bindings, this is one of the most spectacular. Certainly nothing comparable previously has been published in English.

The craft of bookbinding has a very promising future. Indeed, it is arguable that it is coming into its greatest period of creativity because most of its exponents are well educated and design oriented before they become bookbinders. And because the majority have not had long trade training, they are untrammeled by years of blinkering association with closed minds and adherence to conventional techniques and practices, not all of which are laudable. Some trade binders, however, leave the commercial area of the craft while still young, and they have the advantage of slickness of technique, and are still youthful enough to be flexible in their thinking.

We have books that are finely printed on good paper to bind, and we have talented craftspeople to bind them with materials that, in many instances, are now of better quality than for a long time, and when the recession passes there will be a large potential market for high-quality work. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of institutional teaching of the craft in America, especially at a sophisticated level, but there are plans in one or two areas to rectify this situation. If they are implemented we can look forward to an exciting future in the United States for an ancient craft that has the capacity to evolve and remain relevant in changing times.

LONDON, ENGLAND

JULY 1983

BERNARD C. MIDDLETON

PREFACE

A narrow strip of land about eighty kilometers wide separates the Baltic Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. Its ever-changing seascapes and skies brought magic into a little girl’s dreams. When I think of those romantic surroundings of my childhood, it seems natural that I should find myself in an artistic profession. I was born in 1940 in Kiel, capital of Schleswig-Holstein, where my father taught painting and the history of art at an art college run on the Bauhaus principle. He was also deeply versed in German literature and we spent many hours together talking about the parallel development of the arts throughout history; of the various interactions between architecture and painting, literature and music.

Reading and painting were the things I liked best, so I decided to become an illustrator of books. But my father advised me first to learn the principles of the bookbinding craft. As a fashion designer must know how to sew, a book illustrator must know the fundamentals of a book. After leaving high school, I spent three whole years learning the manual part of bookbinding, interspersed with summer courses in design and history. And with the books that I bound for my final examinations at the completion of the three years, I realized that I had developed skills that enabled me to express myself. I knew then how fulfilling it could be to complete a book that would be unique; to design the binding was to create a whole thing, and with that realization my life as a designer-binder began.

I chose the title My World of Bibliophile Binding because I wanted the readers to know that this book very much reflects my own philosophy: insistence, that is, on doing work that I can believe in, work that meets my own standards of honesty and integrity, but encompassing also the need to respect the work and effort that others have already invested in the book on which I am working. A fine, or as I prefer to say, a bibliophile binding is created to please a single collector and of course to preserve a book for future generations. You could, without doubt, put a fine binding in full leather on a paperback, but the books I work with differ in many ways from the books that one can buy in an ordinary bookshop. Old and rare books, first editions, special limited editions, illustrated books, and especially books from private presses that carry on the great traditions of William Morris and the other men who revived the art of books in England in the late nineteenth century. These are the books I like to work with, books created with care for the pleasure of booklovers.

An art bookbinder must understand that any collector’s item is very dear to its owner, who may have invested a great deal of time and money in acquiring it; more important, all sincere bibliophiles develop a highly personal relationship with their books. And this bond is one of many considerations that become components in the process by which I design a book. The contributions of the typographer, the author, the printer, the illustrator, and then the feelings of the collector—all form a background against which I begin my work on the design. But in my final design of the binding, it is the feelings I had while reading the book in hand that are expressed.

This freedom is something that bookbinders have not always had. Indeed, it was not until after the art deco period that binders were able to express themselves fully in their work. For centuries, binding followed very strictly