Coptic Bookbinding

The idea of a book serving as a companion -- a humane presence in whose company one takes nourishment, a trustworthy guide on pilgrimage or expendition, a close associate whose society one prizes -- dates back to the classical world.
-- The Oxford Companion to the Book, 2010, p. xi

Over the course of the month of April I took the Bookbinding Core Certificate Program at the San Francisco Center for the Book. During the first weekend class, on Saturday April 4, we executed a Coptic stitched book. The program increased in complexity each consecutive week, so this first week was an introduction to the tools, vocabulary, and materials in addition to being an introduction to one of the oldest methods of binding, coptic bookbinding.

Although some Coptic bound codices from Ancient Egypt were made from wooden boards covered in leather and sometimes had a wrapper attached to the spine (Roberts and Etherington, 1982, p. 65), the book we made has an exposed spine and covers composed of contemporary (paper) bookboard that are covered with paper. The exposed spine of the product of this workshop is great for showing off the chain stitch, that typical Coptic braid. Additionally, a signature touch of the Coptic binding style was the inclusion of headbands that extend to the boards (Greenfield, 1998, p. 81), but since this workshop started with the basics, we did not include headbands or tailbands.

For this workshop we were supplied with pre-cut pages to make the signatures, as well as bookboards that had roughly been cut to size. We choose and cut paper for the covers ourselves, as well as trimmed the fore-edge of the signatures once we folded them and trimmed the bookboards. We learned how to use the large paper cutter this week! The sewing of the actual coptic stitch through the sewing stations in the signatures was fun, except for the complicated punctures that were required through the book boards (four punctures with a thin awl, two being diagonal coming through the spine to either of the closest front and back holes). I think this was especially difficult because I did not have a thimble or needle gripping tool, and because I was using the same hooked needles that make the looping of the coptic stitched braid easy (it's hard to poke a curved needle through a diagonal burrow in the spine of the cover!). Out of all the bindings I learned in this program, this is the only one that does not use all along stitching -- we used two pieces of thread and four sewing stations.

Hook needle on one end of a piece of still-attached thread.
Yes that's my blood on the cover! (Happy Easter) 

Workstation towards the very end of the workshop.
Threads just waiting to be tied off.

Finished view of the spine. That crooked stitch on the right could use some improvement! 

To discuss the Coptic method of stitching or binding is to dive into the history of writing and the genesis of what can be defined as a book. Historically, as humans developed methods of organizing data that their minds alone could not hold, they used scripts on tablets made of stone or clay, then they used scrolls often made from papyrus or parchment, and finally leaves often made of papyrus that needed to be bound together to maintain order and portability, which brings us to the period of the codex. We have evidence of the existence of codices as early as the 1st Century A.D. (Roberts and Etherington, 1982, p. 60). The Oxford English Dictionary defines codex as, "A manuscript volume: e.g. one of the ancient manuscripts of the Scriptures (as the Codex Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, etc.), or of the ancient classics" (OED Online). At this contemporary point in history, codex refers to the most ancient form of what we now consider a bound book, but within the book worker culture, codex can be a broader term that takes on connotations of artistry, handy work, and a specific subculture (see the Codex Symposium and Book Fair).

As with many things, religion was the catalyst for the development of codices and the Coptic method of stitching, as "Copts are native Egyptian Christians [whose] bindings are the earliest known bindings of the codex format" (Greenfield, 1998, p. 81). The discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices in Egypt in 1945 was a special insight to evidence of this method of binding, not to mention a discovery that provided primary sources of the Gnostics. While later development of the codex showed a preference for vellum or parchment as materials, these early examples of of Coptic-stitched codices show the use of papyrus for leaves (Roberts and Etherington, 1982, p. 60) and leather for covers.

One of the neat things about the Coptic bound codex is how it contains most of the major trends in bookbinding in its compressed history. With its development we see the innovation of style, form, and materials that have become typical in later eras and regional trends of bookbinding.

References

Codex. (2015). In OED Online. Retrieved from http://0-www.oed.com.ignacio.usfca.edu/view/Entry/35593?redirectedFrom=codex

Greenfield, J. (1998). ABC of bookbinding: a unique glossary with over 700 illustrations for collectors & librarians. New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press; New York, NY: Lyons Press.

Roberts, M., & Etherington, D. (1982). Bookbinding and the conservation of books : a dictionary of descriptive terminology. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress.

Suarez, M. F., & Woudhuysen, H. R. (2010). Introduction. In M. F. Suarez & H. R. Woudhuysen (Eds.), The Oxford companion to the book (ix - xiii). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.