The Chelsea Bindery: The Processes of Book-Binding

The Chelsea Bindery: The Processes of Book-Binding

This video explains and demonstrates the different processes used in bookbinding. The Chelsea Bindery specialises in fine binding, preservation boxes and book restoration, offering a traditional leather bookbinding and conservation service using hand finishing and the finest materials. For more information about the services offered by the bindery see the Chelsea Bindery homepage.

Transcript

Rounding and Backing

Once the sections have been sewn together and the page edges gilded, the book block is rounded and backed. The spine is rounded with the face of the backing hammer working directly on the bench. A layer of glue, which has already been applied to the spine, ensures that the sections don’t slide against each other while the book is being worked on. The book block is placed in the backing machine so that the spine is a board thickness proud of the press edges. Starting with the middle sections and working outwards, the backing hammer claw is used to fold the spine edges of each section over the next section. The outer sections fold over the press edges to create a joint for the thickness of the boards. The metal roll is then brought over the spine several times to smooth out any irregularities ant sharpen the joints.

Trimming the Boards

The boards are measured so that they will lie a little beyond the page edges in order to give the edges some protection. They are cut to size on a board chopper.

Head-banding

The head-bands are sewn by winding three different colours of thread in a particular way around a core made from cloth and thin card. The thread is sewn, or tied down, into some of the sections in order to attach the head-band to the spine of the book. The excess core is trimmed at an angle from the edge of the head-band to the edge of the spine.

First and second linings

The linings are glued to the spine with animal glue. The spine is first lined with a strip of mull which gives a good key to the glue and ensures that the other linings are held firmly in place. A shorter and wider calico strip spine comes next and then a strip of Kraft paper. Each layer is rubbed down well with a bone folder. The extra width of calico will be used to reinforce the joints. The spine has been left to dry and sanded smooth. A hollow is made on or off the book by folding and gluing Kraft paper together to form a tube the width of the spine.

Raised Bands

The spine is divided so that the five bands will be equal distant apart from each other and the head of the spine but the tail panel will be one third larger than the others. This is done purely for aesthetic reasons. Bands are then trimmed.

Covering

The leather is cut to allow a good size turn-in all round, and pared thinner where necessary. The outer surface is damped down before applying cold water paste to the other side. The leather is wrapped around the book and worked on to the spine. It is worked firmly over the bands with a band-stick. The boards can be repositioned if necessary at this stage. The book is opened up and the corners of the leather are cut away with shallow 45 degree cut just over a board’s thickness away from the book boards. The leather at the tip is then pared very thinly using a knife so that it can be mitred neatly around the corners. The leather is turned in over the boards and down the joints and the head-caps are formed with a bone folder.

Nipping bands

The bands are made more defined with the use of band nippers.

Finishing

The books are decorated with gold leaf. Glaire is applied to the leather before placing the gold on. A heated brass tool activates the glaire underneath permanently attaching a pattern of gold to the leather. Any loose gold can be cleaned off. The bindery has a variety of rolls, decorative tools and pallets. A spine is decorated with pallets and centre tools.

Using the intertype to create the lead letter type for the titles

Lead lettering slugs are made up for each individual title with the intertype machine. Once the titling is done, the lead is melted down again for the next book. This machine came from the Zaehndorf bindery and, as far as we know, is the only one left of its type in the London. The lead slugs are placed in type-holders.

Lettering the spine

These are used in the same way as the decorative tools.

Pasting down the endpapers

This is the last process to be done in order to complete the binding of a book.

The Great Gatsby dust jacket: one of the most enigmatic in modern literature

The Great Gatsby dust jacket: one of the most enigmatic in modern literature

Adam Douglas, Senior Specialist in Literature at Peter Harrington presents a first edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and explains the creation of its iconic dust jacket.

Read our author’s page for F. Scott Fitzgerald.

 

Transcript

This is the first edition of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This dust jacket is possibly the most remarkable thing about the book and it’s been called one of the most iconic book jacket designs in 20th century American literature.

To understand about why it’s so startling a jacket for publication date, which is April 1925, we might look at some earlier examples. This is a book published 30 years earlier – The Ebb-Tide by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. You can see the publisher has advertised a list of other books on the front. The idea behind this was that the jacket was temporary and would be thrown away when the buyer bought the book. The jacket was simply there to protect the book while it was being browsed in the book shop.

If you look inside the jacket, you see that the designer lavished more care and attention on the front of the book than the jacket itself.

And even F. Scott Fitzgerald’s earlier works had been published with simpler jackets, like this one for The Beautiful and Damned. You can see that the illustration on the front cover is very much like the illustration from a magazine at the time. There is not very much colour, just the orange disc to bring the book to life a little bit.

But for The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald had decided that he wanted to create something more artistic.

The jacket itself does not represent literally the events of the novel; it’s rather a symbolic evocation of the events. The most noticeable features are the two eyes of a woman staring over the Coney Island scene beneath.

Fitzgerald was in the middle of writing The Great Gatsby when he was first shown the dust jacket art. He was in America at the time and his publisher shown him the early drafts of the jacket. Fitzgerald then moved to Italy and the South of France in order to finish the book, and he wrote back to his publisher saying: “For Christ’s sake don’t give anyone that jacket you’re saving for me. I’ve written it into the book.”

This is a unique occurrence, as far as anybody can tell, where the actual design of the dust jacket influenced the writing of the novel. The two eyes of the cover are echoed in the book by the two eyes of the oculist watching down from the billboard over the inhabitants of the book. Obviously the character is different on the jacket, it’s a female face, but it’s also reminiscent of Daisy’s face that haunts Gatsby in his quest to win her back.

The jacket is also very finely detailed in a way that Fitzgerald’s earlier jackets hadn’t been. It’s possible, for example, to read into the irises of the girl’s eyes on the cover two reclining nudes just inside the eyes. There is also a contrast with the lights of the Coney Island scene at the bottom, representing the excitement of that era but it’s also the danger; it’s hard to tell if there’s  an  explosion happening. And that also echoes the car crash in the novel.

One of the falling lights in the sky could be sodium glare or it could be a tear falling from one the eye, so it’s a very evocative and symbolic jacket, which is unusual for this time. It’s not actually an especially rare book – they were over 18,000 copies printed of the first edition. But what is rare is the survival of the dust jacket.

One of the main reason for this being that the jacket itself is printed just very slightly too tall for the book, so it always has a tendency to chip at the edges. The paper gets brittle and chips away, which argues against its survival.

The other interesting thing about the jacket, one thing that collectors have to be wary of, is that there was a printing mistake at the back of the jacket; the name Jay Gatsby was printed with a lower case “j”, so every copy of the first issue jacket was corrected by hand and the capital letter “J” was written in over the lower case. This shows this is a first issue jacket.

We don’t know very much about the artist who produced this jacket. We know that he was Francis Cugat and that he was born in Spain. His family emigrated to Cuba and then came to America that way. His brother Javier Cugat was a Cuban band leader in America. But Francis Cugat did no more jackets; this is the only dust jacket that has been identified as his work. He worked on one Hollywood film for Douglas Fairbanks, the Gaucho, the following year in 1926. Apart from that he only exhibited once in New York and died in relative obscurity in the early 1980s.

So this is an enigmatic jacket and an enigmatic jacket artist. The jacket itself adds considerable value to surviving copies of The Great Gatsby.

The probable order of these sketches was that the first one here is a railway scene. Although it resembles Spain more than Long Island, this is actually the Long Island Rail Road. You also get here the first conception of the faces, the eyes in the clouds in the sky watching the action.

It then seems that Cugat went through various sketches, developing the idea of the eyes. Here he has a single eye and a profile as if he was trying to do something in the style of Picasso. There is also a very rudimentary sketch of the cityscape meant to be Long Island.

They are also various attempts to capture eyes in the sky here and then below a fairground, which then develops into a more realised design with the eyes almost as they are on the book, with the turning shape of the carnival wheel. But at the bottom the cityscape is actually Manhattan, which makes it quite urban and not in suiting to the book.

This design here which is a study for a nocturnal carnival, sees Cugat trying out the colour which will end up in the final jacket. The dense night blue gives the jacket a party atmosphere but also a sense of unease.

It’s probably the most outstanding example of a dust jacket adding huge value to the copy. We have this book priced at £120,000; without its jacket I expect the book to be priced at around £5,000.

It’s often said that The Great Gatsby dust jacket is the most expensive single piece of paper in 20th century book collecting.

Bousfield Primary School and Peter Harrington celebrate World Book Day 2013

Bousfield Primary School and Peter Harrington celebrate World Book Day 2013

Thursday 7th March marks the occasion of World Book Day 2013. And what better way to celebrate the day than by going back to where books make their greatest impact – school.

We took a selection of rare and fascinating books to the pupils of Bousfield Primary School in Chelsea. Bousfield, which opened in 1956, is situated just round the corner from our shop. The teachers and pupils are all passionate about books and historically the school has a very strong literary heritage. Beatrix Potter, the children’s author and illustrator, was born and grew up in a house on the site of Bousfield. Some of her books, including Peter Rabbit, were written there, and it is reputed that Mrs Tiggy-Winkle is buried under the mulberry tree in the garden.

Bousfield Primary School is one of the first examples of post-war architecture to be made a listed building by English Heritage. It has a very Eames House look about it.

Bousfield Primary School is one of the first examples of post-war architecture to be made a listed building by English Heritage. It has a very Eames House look about it.

The school also has a long-lasting relationship with Quentin Blake who is a neighbour and who visits the school several times a year. The biggest celebration of the year being when Year 6 (11 years old) graduate and write their very own book which is then signed by Quentin. He also helps giving out prizes and draws illustrations for the pupils.

So, with a bag full of first editions and rare treasures of bookmaking history, owner, Pom Harrington went back to school. Year 5 and Year 6 were  given the chance to look at first editions of some of the world’s best loved children’s books.

Pom first introduced the kids to a single leaf of the Gutenberg Bible, the world’s first ever printed book with movable type. He demonstrated the origin of the printed word by showing some cast metal types that we use in the Chelsea Bindery and that are commonly referred to as “slugs” by bookbinders.

After guessing when and how long it took for the first copies of the bible to be printed, the answer that all the pupils wanted to know was “How much does it actually cost?” This was a prefect opportunity for the teacher to jump in with a Maths question “If a single leaf of the Gutenberg Bible is £50,000, how much would a 450-page bible cost?”

 

A pupil takes a closer look at a movable type cast also known as "slug"

A pupil takes a closer look at a movable type cast also known as “slug”

 

World Book day

 

Pom then introduced the pupils to the concept of first editions and how to identify them. And what better way to do this than by taking the example of schoolkids favourite’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone. Full of knowledge and tips on the subject, the pupils were eager to check if they owned a first edition of Harry Potter at home.

 To finish the session, the pupils were presented several children’s literature classic such as Winnie-the-Pooh and to their delight some of Roald Dahl‘s classics, which included Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

As the session finished, we were invited to the library corner to check for any rare gems. Several of the books turned out to be first editions, although they are not planning to be made available for sale!

* World Book Day was originally designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading and is celebrated in over 100 countries around the globe. It was first introduced in Britain in 1955 and every child in full-time education in the UK is given a voucher to be spent on books. Pupils also usually celebrate by dressing up as their favourite book character.

The Newgate Prison diary features on BBC Inside Out London

The Newgate Prison diary features on BBC Inside Out London

There has been a lot of interest in the last few weeks about about an unusual item we have recently acquired.

The Diary of Convicts executed since the year 1812 inclusive at Newgate; by the Rev. Horace Salusbury Cotton, the Ordinary, or Chaplain, of Newgate Prison firstly picked up the interest of Westminster Tour Guide and Historian extraordinaire Peter Berthoud in his wonderful blog at Discovering London.

 

The story of the Diary was also reported in an episode of BBC Inside Out London presented by everyone’s favourite Cockney; Lary Lamb. You can watch the clip of the Newgate Prison Diary.

Newgate Prison diary

There is also a written article by Ed Davey on the BBC website about the “Vicar’s little black book of death”.

Newgate Prison Diary 3 Newgate Prison diary 4 Newgate Prison diary 5

Here to see our complete selection of items related to First Edition Crime Books.

Peter Harrington at the London Masterpiece Fair 2012

Peter Harrington at the London Masterpiece Fair 2012

For the third year running we are exhibiting at the prestigious Masterpiece fair, showcasing the finest art, antiques and design from around the world. The fair is open between 28th June and 4th July 2012.

Here is a preview of the rare books, fine bindings and prints on display. You can find us on Stand A46.

Masterpiece is situated in the South Grounds of the Royal Hospital in Chelsea

Masterpiece is situated in the South Grounds of the Royal Hospital in Chelsea

The Peter Harrington stand at Masterpiece (A46)

The Peter Harrington stand at Masterpiece (A46)

Andy Warhol's Sunset overlooking the stand

Andy Warhol’s Sunset overlooking the stand

A magnificent selection of classic first editions in dust jacket: 20th century American literature on the top shelf and 20th century British literature on the bottom shelf.

A magnificent selection of classic first editions in dust jacket: 20th century American literature on the top shelf and 20th century British literature on the bottom shelf.

Inquisitive owl: John Gould's The Birds of Great Britain

Inquisitive owl: John Gould’s The Birds of Great Britain

A lovely selection of Cosway and fine decorative bindings

A lovely selection of Cosway and fine decorative bindings

Winnie-the-Pooh first editions and original illustrations

Winnie-the-Pooh first editions and original illustrations

Some Arthur Rackham illustrations and Harry Potter

Some Arthur Rackham illustrations and Harry Potter

A magnificent Arabic and Persian manuscript of the Qur'an on the right

A magnificent Arabic and Persian manuscript of the Qur’an on the right

The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer and Shakespeare's Second Folio standing side by side

The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer and Shakespeare’s Second Folio standing side by side

For opening times and ticket information about the Masterpiece Fair 2012 click here