Classic Rounded Back Cloth Binding

Front cover of my classic rounded back cloth binding

Back cover of my classic rounded back cloth binding. I think picking the cloth and the paper was one of the most pleasureful parts of taking workshops at the San Francisco Center for the Book. 

The final workshop of the San Francisco Center for the Book's Bookbinding Core Certificate Program on April 25 and 26, 2015 brought all we had learned in the previous 3 weeks together in one skilled package. We learned some new things that built upon our existing knowledge and further refined skills we had already learned. Ultimately we created a beautiful cloth covered rounded back hard case book.

This workshop began with creating our signatures, as all the workshops did, but this time we folded larger sheets of paper into quartos, including two greenish colored end sheets, all of whose folded edges we cut in the guillotine after sewing the textblock.

Headbands were one of the main things we perfected this week. We started out on headbands last week with limp paper binding, we practiced more on old paperbacks this week on Saturday afternoon, and finally we used silk thread to sew endbands on our rounded back hard case book first thing Sunday morning. I loved sewing the headband, learning to make the beads, how to tighten each stitch, and appreciated the beauty and durability that emerges as a braid comes into physicality. Since I used two different colors of thread for this headband -- the white thread ended up being the "dominant" thread -- it was much easier to complete the sewing steps this week than last week.

The best of my two end bands. Always can pack more and bead tighter...

The spine got a lot of attention this week. Expectedly, all our rounding steps were an aspect to be learned in conjunction with learning about the swell, but we also did a lot of finishing to the spine in preparation for the cloth binding, effectively preventing it from exhibiting raised bands. For rounding the spine, the trick is to push and guide the rounding with a hammer, not pound it, and never hit it straight on. For preparing the spine to be covered, we adhered several layers of different weight papers in between the cords and on top of the cords using wheat paste and/or PVA, sanded it down, and finally constructed a tube to adhere to the spine to achieve the hollow back state, providing movement and space from the cloth cover of the spine. The result was a book with a smooth spine, allowing the book to open and close with increased mobility and resilience.

Of most important note is the way in which the boards are attached. Unlike the flat back hard case binding that is cased in, the ends of the cords around which the textblock is sewn are laced into two separate boards that compose the front and back of the book, utilizing the lacing-in technique. The case is not a pre-existing shell that is attached to the textblock more or less by the endsheets alone like most contemporary library bindings. Binding a book by lacing the cords through the boards gave me a deeper sense of what makes a book durable, what gives it strength, and on the other hand, how it is used that can most commonly cause deterioration.

Click to enlarge if necessary --
if you look just to the right of the gutter, in about the middle, you will see the outline of two fan looking things under the surface of the endsheet. These are the cords with which I laced-in the boards. They are threaded through a grooved hole on the exterior side and emerge in the interior, where they are spread apart (to make the fan appearance) and pasted down. 

There are a lot of things I like about this book, but one of my favorites -- and the virtue of the form -- is the way in which the case fits around the textblock's joints or "grooves." We devoted much attention to the creation of the joints while the textblock was in the lying press, getting its rounding, and it was worth it once I laced in the cords and slid either board up to the joint. Could the joint be the sexiest part of a book? Maybe the most private one...

Detail of cloth and paper for covers.

The back is rounded on the spine which leads to this concave form of the fore-edge of the textblock. 

I don't see this workshop as teaching one particular form or style of binding, so to focus on the historical aspects of what we learned necessitates breaking it down to two categories: rounding and backing and lacing in the book boards.

Rounding as a physical characteristic began as a shape that occurred naturally due to the swell from the sewing threads and the pressure from the boards being laced in tightly; at some point since the year 1500, it became a technique assumed purposefully as craft (Middleton, 1963, p. 59). Rounding extends the life and durability of the book by taking pressure off the hinges (pressure that could result in a flat spine falling, which gives the fore edge a convex form), accommodating the swell of the sewing threads, and creating a shoulder or joint into which the bookboard fits perfectly (Roberts and Etherington, 1982, p. 222). As Middleton says, "fortuitous jointing" perhaps occurred before rounding was assumed as craft technique -- fortuitous because of the boon to longevity and heartiness it provides (1963, pp. 59). While the vogues of rounding styles came and went with the centuries and decades and may have been at odds with the ideal form of 1/6 of a circle, a book's inherent thickness may determine its rounding more than the binder's hand: "thick books of many signatures with extensive guarding will tend to round themselves more than is desirable with no help; and thin books of few signatures often do not have sufficient swell to permit any rounding" (Young, 1995, p. 99-100). Ultimately, form and function work hand in hand with the rounding of a spine.

Vogues of rounded backs (Middleton, 1963, p. 60).

Vogues of rounded backs (Middleton, 1963, p. 61).

The practice of lacing-in, in general, is one that has been around nearly as long as the practice of codex bookbinding, and for good reason, as it provides strength that adhesives alone cannot deliver. Roberts and Etherington trace the lacing-in technique from Coptic style bindings of the 7th or 8th century, through the vogues of how the holes were drilled through the wood and later paper boards throughout the centuries, to its decline in the 19th century in favor of split boards and the French joint (1982, pp. 148-149). Middleton goes on to discuss the method of carving a groove in the boards to allow for the cords to pass through, which began to be practiced at the end of the 18th century: "this is a very useful device because the weakening effect on the board is negligible, but it allows thick cords to be laced in without unsightliness" (1963, p. 74). This is what I learned in the workshop, and it provides an aesthetic effect needed for the fine bindings it is often associated with, in addition to maintaining the integrity of form for which it is used.

Works Cited

Middleton, B. C. (1963). A history of english craft bookbinding technique. New York, NY: Hafner.

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

Young, L. (1995). Bookbinding & conservation by hand: a working guide. New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press.