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Charles M. Adams American Trade Binding Collection - Development of Publishers' Bindings

Development of Publishers' Bindings - Part Three

The invention of bookbinding cloth began with a quest for durability. Once found, a technique of sizing the cloth had to be devised so that the glues used in the binding would not seep through the porous cloths. The next development was uniform dyeing followed by techniques of stamping and embossing the cloth to give them interesting surfaces. Early cloths were often pressed between stamping rollers, a process that resulted in various textures given imaginative names such as diaper, ripple, wavy, dot, bubble, and sand. Next, a method of gold leaf application was perfected for cloth [binders had been applying gold to leather for two centuries] followed by new techniques for applying black and other colors. These innovations took place over a period of approximately fifty years.

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wkfinley@uncg.edu

Text for this article is from the 1987-1988 Report of the Secretary for the Friends of the Library Report published by Walter Clinton Jackson Library, University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

This material may not be reproduced/republished in any format without the expressed permission of Walter Clinton Jackson Library of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

This page maintained by Carolyn Shankle.
Updated October 4, 2002.