From Forwarding To Finishing—

Bookbinding Made Easy

By John Renjilian

By Dottie Evans

It has been said that we cannot judge a book by its cover. But would we be remiss if we judged the book cover by its decoration?

––Peggy Gross, Trustee for the Newtown Historical Society

The answer to that question is most definitely not.

And especially not if one is a skilled collector of antiquarian books such as Newtown’s John Renjilian, who spoke to the Newtown Historical Society on Monday night, March 14, on the Art of Bookbinding.

Although Mr Renjilian, a 40-year veteran bookseller, brought along many of his favorite volumes for display and demonstration, as well as a number of the tools that a craftsman would have used to create unique, hand-embossed bindings, he wasted no time delving right into what he finds most fascinating. The process itself.

Within 12 minutes of concentrated cutting and folding, taping and sewing, Mr Renjilian had created a bound booklet in the manner that his predecessors would have followed three and four centuries ago.

“My specialty is American bookbinding of the 18th and 19th Centuries,” he noted and showed slides of his earliest antiquarian American books dating from the early 1700s.

“Boston was the publishing center before the Revolution, and then Philadelphia began to overtake that [dominance],” he said.

The earliest books crafted in America were made using wooden covers over which leather was glued and later embossed and decorated.

“The corner ornaments might have been stamped on in the pattern of a flower or a finial,” he said, illustrating with a slide of a 1716 volume where the stamped floral design could be clearly seen despite the worn condition of the cover.

“Illustration was first added using woodcuts because they could be inserted directly into the printing process,” Mr Renjilian explained.

A slide of a roughly drawn horse had been taken from a 1718 Husbandman’s Magazine written to show a gentlemen exactly how to be a farmer.

Gilded edges and gilt borders were added in 1747, as shown by a Boston volume full of Puritan pessimism amusingly titled The Imperfection of the Creature.

By the beginning of the next century, bookbinders were still crafting their covers in local binderies, but they began introducing cloth or wallpaper bindings to add a decorative touch.

“The hand-crafted era in American bookbinding was coming to an end by the 1840s to 1850s, at which time factories were built to machine tool the books in mass production style –– often with women working at the finishing machinery,” Mr Renjilian said.

His slides were taken from engravings in Harper’s magazine and showed long rows of women wearing tight-waisted, long, full-skirted Victorian dresses while bent over their work tables, applying decoration with steam-driven pressure tools.

“You can see the only light they had came through the tall windows, and in summer when it was hot, protective louvered glass barriers were set up over the work areas to keep that expensive gilt from blowing right out the window,” Mr Renjilian said.

At the same time that the local hand craftsmen gave way to machine-crafted bookbinding, the local bookbinding centers were overtaken by regional centers.

“It was the growth of transportation that made this possible,” Mr Renjilian said.

In the 1830s, the raw materials could be shipped by canal to bookbinding centers –– a slow process. By the 1840s, they could be transported by railroad –– much faster.

 Before this, hauling books any distance at all over the rough cart roads, turnpikes, and Indian trails would have been prohibitive, so books were bound in the same locality where they were printed –– by individual local craftsmen.

The final touch by the local bookbinder was the application of his “binder’s ticket” or stamp on the inside cover including his name or the name of his bindery.

“He was an artist who wanted his signature affixed to his work –– and this was how he did it,” Mr Renjilian said.

For many years, John Renjilian has managed the Collectible Room at the Friends of the Booth Library Annual Labor Day Book Sale, and he operates his book buying and selling business, called The Pages Of Yesteryear, out of his Newtown home. Anyone with questions or information about antiquarian books, or who would like to speak with Mr Renjilian, should call him at 426-0864.