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62-650: A large traditional hand bookbinding studio or workshop may be divided into areas for different tasks such as sewing, rounding and backing the spine, attaching the boards to the book and covering the book with cloth or leather. These processes are collectively called forwarding and would be carried out in the forwarding department. This area of the bindery would typically have equipment such as sewing frames, guillotines , board choppers for cutting boards used as covers, laying presses for holding books when being worked on and nipping presses for flattening paper, board, etc. Recently, some compact material have been developed, allowing

124-412: A calf . This is also called full-bound or, simply, leather bound. Library binding refers to the hardcover binding of books intended for the rigors of library use and are largely serials and paperback publications. Though many publishers have started to provide "library binding" editions, many libraries elect to purchase paperbacks and have them rebound in hard covers for longer life. There are

186-454: A 16th-century manuscript. Bookbinders may bind several copies of the same text, giving each copy a unique appearance. Hand bookbinders use a variety of specialized hand tools, the most emblematic of which is the bonefolder , a flat, tapered, polished piece of bone used to crease paper and apply pressure. Additional tools common to hand bookbinding include a variety of knives and hammers, as well as brass tools used during finishing (as seen in

248-427: A 9th-century Ecumenical Patriarch . The titles of over twenty such ancient Greek romance novels are known, but most of them have only survived in an incomplete, fragmentary form. The unattributed Metiochus and Parthenope may be preserved by what appears to be a faithful Persian translation by the poet Unsuri . The Greek novel as a genre began in the first century CE, and flourished in the first four centuries; it

310-445: A beautiful work of art and a useless stack of paper and leather. The sections are then hand-sewn in the style of its period, back into book form, or the original sewing is strengthened with new lining on the text-spine. New hinges must be accounted for in either case both with text-spine lining and some sort of end-sheet restoration. The next step is the restoration of the book cover. This can be as complicated as completely re-creating

372-494: A century. Until the mid-20th century, covers of mass-produced books were laid with bookcloth, but from that period onward, most publishers adopted clothette, a kind of textured paper which vaguely resembles cloth but is easily differentiated on close inspection. Most cloth-bound books are now half-and-half covers with cloth covering only the spine. In that case, the cover has a paper overlap. The covers of modern hardback books are made of thick cardboard. Some books that appeared in

434-664: A course of treatment must be chosen that takes into account the book's value, whether it comes from the binding, the text, the provenance , or some combination of the three. Many people choose to rebind books, from amateurs who restore old paperbacks on internet instructions to many professional book and paper conservators and restorationists, who often in the United States are members of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC). Many times, books that need to be restored are hundreds of years old, and

496-410: A day using such processes as perfect binding , saddle wire binding, and case binding. The term, bindery, especially in copy and print shops, has expanded to include other forms of paper finishing, such as paper drilling , lamination , and foamcore mounting. This publishing -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about making art out of books ,

558-706: A fair number of the ivory panels have survived, as they were hard to recycle; the divided panels from the Codex Aureus of Lorsch are among the most notable. The 8th century Vienna Coronation Gospels were given a new gold relief cover in about 1500, and the Lindau Gospels (now Morgan Library , New York) have their original cover from around 800. Luxury medieval books for the library had leather covers decorated, often all over, with tooling (incised lines or patterns), blind stamps , and often small metal pieces of furniture. Medieval stamps showed animals and figures as well as

620-496: A folding concertina format. Such a set of simple wooden boards sewn together was called by the Romans a codex (pl. codices)—from the Latin word caudex , meaning "the trunk" of a tree, around the first century AD. Two ancient polyptychs, a pentaptych and octoptych, excavated at Herculaneum employed a unique connecting system that presages later sewing on thongs or cords. At the turn of

682-501: A modern wine rack. Court records and notes were written on wax tablets , while important documents were written on papyrus or parchment . The modern English word "book" comes from the Proto-Germanic *bokiz , referring to the beechwood on which early written works were recorded. The book was not needed in ancient times, as many early Greek texts—scrolls—were 30 pages long, which were customarily folded accordion-fashion to fit into

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744-529: A new work, modern binders may wish to select a book that has already been printed and create what is known as a 'design binding'. "In a typical design binding, the binder selects an already printed book, disassembles it, and rebinds it in a style of fine binding—rounded and backed spine, laced-in boards, sewn headbands, decorative end sheets, leather cover etc." Conservation and restoration are practices intended to repair damage to an existing book. While they share methods, their goals differ. The goal of conservation

806-411: A number of methods used to bind hardcover books. Those still in use include: Different types of the punch and bind binding include: Some of the different types of thermally activated binding include: Modern bookbinding by hand can be seen as two closely allied fields: the creation of new bindings, and the repair of existing bindings. Bookbinders are often active in both fields. Bookbinders can learn

868-424: A period binding to match the original using whatever is appropriate for that time it was originally created. Sometimes this means a new full leather binding with vegetable tanned leather, dyed with natural dyes , and hand-marbled papers may be used for the sides or end-sheets. Finally, the cover is hand-tooled in gold leaf. The design of the book cover involves such hand-tooling, where an extremely thin layer of gold

930-628: A prominent centre of the German book-trade, in 1739 had 20 bookshops, 15 printing establishments, 22 book-binders and three type-foundries in a population of 28,000 people. In the German book-distribution system of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the end-user buyers of books "generally made separate arrangements with either the publisher or a bookbinder to have printed sheets bound according to their wishes and their budget". The reduced cost of books facilitated cheap lightweight Bibles, made from tissue-thin oxford paper, with floppy covers, that resembled

992-413: A thick needle and strong thread. One can also use loose-leaf rings, binding posts, twin-loop spine coils, plastic spiral coils, and plastic spine combs, but they last for a shorter time. Next, one encloses the bound stack of paper in a cover. Finally, one places an attractive cover onto the boards, and features the publisher's information and artistic decorations. The trade of binding books is in two parts:

1054-466: Is a skilled trade that requires measuring, cutting, and gluing. A finished book requires many steps to complete. This is usually determined by the materials needed and the layout of the book. Bookbinding combines skills from the trades of paper making , textile and leather-working crafts, model making, and graphic design in order to create a book. For instances, these design and cut pages, assemble pages into paper sheets, et cetera. The trade of bookbinding

1116-579: Is applied to the cover. Such designs can be lettering, symbols, or floral designs, depending on the nature of any particular project. Sometimes the restoration of the cover is a matter of surgically strengthening the original cover by lifting the original materials and applying new materials for strength. This is perhaps a more common method for covers made with book-cloth although leather books can be approached this way as well. Materials such as Japanese tissues of various weights may be used. Colors may be matched using acrylic paints or simple colored pencils. It

1178-552: Is both a craft done out of creativity and passion and a process happening in a factory. But each type of bookbinding always resolves three problems in making a book: (i) how to bind the paper sheets into a book block; (ii) how to cover and protect the bound pages; and (iii) how to label and decorate the book covers that protect the pages. Writers in the Hellenistic-Roman culture wrote longer texts as scrolls ; these were stored in boxes or shelving with small cubbyholes, similar to

1240-518: Is generally credited with having introduced cotton-based book cloth to wholesale bookbinding, which was of great importance to the economy and global expansion of book sales in the 19th century. The new material was much longer lasting than paper "boards" and significantly cheaper than the more elegant leather bindings. As the century progressed, fine quality mass produced covers emerged, often with bright colours and textures, introduced by Archibald Winterbottom & Sons , which dominated bookbinding for

1302-464: Is stitched in the spine. Looking from the top of the spine, the book can be seen to consist of a number of signatures bound together. When the book is opened in the middle of a signature, the binding threads are visible. Signatures of hardcover books are typically octavo (a single sheet folded three times), though they may also be folio, quarto, or 16mo (see Book size ). Unusually large and heavy books are sometimes bound with wire. Archibald Leighton

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1364-864: Is thus a product of the Roman Empire . The exact relationship between the Greek novel and the Latin novels of Petronius and Apuleius is debated, but both Roman writers are thought by most scholars to have been aware of and to some extent influenced by the Greek novels. No ancient Greek term is known for the genre of prose fiction. Modern writers in English may refer to these works as " novels " or " romances ", although those terms were invented for medieval and modern works. In other European languages, terms cognate with "romance" are used in French, German, Italian and Portuguese, while novela

1426-422: Is to slow the book's decay and restore it to a usable state while altering its physical properties as little as possible. Conservation methods have been developed in the course of taking care of large collections of books. The term archival comes from taking care of the institution's archive of books. The goal of restoration is to return the book to a previous state as envisioned by the restorer, often imagined as

1488-432: Is to wrap the scroll around a single core, similar to a modern roll of paper towels. While simple to construct, a single core scroll has a major disadvantage: in order to read text at the end of the scroll, the entire scroll must be unwound. This is partially overcome in the second method, which is to wrap the scroll around two cores, as in a Torah. With a double scroll, the text can be accessed from both beginning and end, and

1550-490: Is used in Spanish. Most scholars agree that the five surviving Greek novels constitute a coherent if flexible genre, but no name for this genre is known from antiquity. Contemporary literary critics usually omit the extended prose narratives of antiquity from discussions of the novel. There are no clear distinctions of genre between the five 'romantic' novels and other works of Greek prose fiction, such as Lucian 's True Story ,

1612-408: Is usually harder to restore leather books because of the fragility of the materials. In U.S. publishing the terms are: Regardless of whether a book is bound with a hardcover or bound with a paperback cover, the binding of the signatures determines the durability of the book-as-artefact. In the case of perfect binding , the pages are aligned, cut, and glued with a strong and flexible layer that holds

1674-564: The Alexander Romance and the Aesop Romance . B.P. Reardon has the following qualifications to define a novel "narrative fiction in prose—imaginative, creative literature, sufficiently similar to what we call novels to justify the term here". This definition allows him to extend the category to include, in addition to the five canon novels, Pseudo-Lucian's The Ass , Lucian's A True Story , Pseudo-Callisthenes' Alexander Romance , and

1736-540: The Western Han period (202 BC – 9 AD), the Eastern-Han Chinese court eunuch Cai Lun ( c.  50 – 121 AD) introduced the first significant improvement and standardization of papermaking by adding essential new materials into its composition. Bookbinding in medieval China replaced traditional Chinese writing supports such as bamboo and wooden slips , as well as silk and paper scrolls. The evolution of

1798-564: The European printing press that replaced traditional Chinese printing methods ). The initial phase of this evolution, the accordion-folded palm-leaf-style book, most likely came from India and was introduced to China via Buddhist missionaries and scriptures . With the arrival (from the East) of rag paper manufacturing in Europe in the late Middle Ages and the use of the printing press beginning in

1860-526: The anonymously written The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre . Although the plots of the surviving novels appear to be relatively conventional, entailing the fulfilled heterosexual desire of a beautiful and usually virtuous young couple, this impression of uniformity and moralism may be an illusion created by later Christians, who decided which to copy for posterity. Writers now lost such as Lollianus (the author of Phoenician Tales ) and Iamblichus seem to have been much more experimental and lurid. Even so,

1922-420: The arts related to bookbinding , or the design of mass-produced books is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Bookbinding Bookbinding is the process of building a book , usually in codex format, from an ordered stack of paper sheets with one's hands and tools, or in modern publishing, by a series of automated processes. Firstly, one binds the sheets of papers along an edge with

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1984-422: The book together. In a paperback book, the visible portion of the spine is part of the flexible layer. In China (only areas using Traditional Chinese), Japan, and Taiwan, literary books are written top-to-bottom, right-to-left, and thus are bound on the right, while textbooks are written left-to-right, top-to-bottom, and thus are bound on the left. In mainland China the direction of writing and binding for all books

2046-475: The books were mostly written on papyrus , and while many are single- quire , a few are multi-quire. Codices were a significant improvement over papyrus or vellum scrolls in that they were easier to handle. However, despite allowing writing on both sides of the leaves, they were still foliated—numbered on the leaves, like the Indian books. The idea spread quickly through the early churches, and the word "Bible" comes from

2108-605: The codex in China began with folded-leaf pamphlets in the 9th century AD, during the late Tang dynasty (618–907), improved by the 'butterfly' bindings of the Song dynasty (960–1279), the wrapped back binding of the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), the stitched binding of the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing dynasties (1644–1912), and finally the adoption of Western-style bookbinding in the 20th century (coupled with

2170-410: The covers and, if necessary, the stitching removed. This is done as delicately as possible. All page restoration is done at this point, be it the removal of foxing , ink stains, page tears, etc. Various techniques are employed to repair the various types of page damage that might have occurred during the life of the book. The preparation of the "foundations" of the book could mean the difference between

2232-496: The craft through apprenticeship ; by attending specialized trade schools; by taking classes in the course of university studies, or by a combination of those methods. Some European countries offer a Master Bookbinder certification, though no such certification exists in the United States. MFA programs that specialize in the 'Book Arts' (hand papermaking, printmaking and bookbinding) are available through certain colleges and universities. Hand bookbinders create new bindings that run

2294-570: The early Arabic Qurans , enabling missionaries to take portable books with them around the world, and modern wood glues enabled the addition of paperback covers to simple glue bindings. The history of book-binding methods features: For several hundred years, Bernard Middleton reminds us, most newly published books were sold with customised or temporary bindings. There are various commercial techniques in use today. Today, most commercially produced books belong to one of four categories: A hardcover , hardbound or hardback book has rigid covers and

2356-410: The fifth century onwards were bound between hard covers, with pages made from parchment folded and sewn onto strong cords or ligaments that were attached to wooden boards and covered with leather. Since early books were exclusively handwritten on handmade materials, sizes and styles varied considerably, and there was no standard of uniformity. Early and medieval codices were bound with flat spines, and it

2418-457: The finishing stoves needed to heat these tools. In a more modern or commercial bindery, many decorative elements or letters are stamped onto a book's cover or case at the same time by use of a hot press. Modern, commercial, bookbinding outfits range in size from the local "copy shop" book binder, using techniques such as coil binding , comb binding and velo binding to factories producing tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of volumes

2480-451: The first century, a kind of folded parchment notebook called pugillares membranei in Latin, became commonly used for writing throughout the Roman Empire . This term was used by the Roman poet Martial . Martial used the term with reference to gifts of literature exchanged by Romans during the festival of Saturnalia . According to T. C. Skeat, "in at least three cases and probably in all, in

2542-429: The first is stationery binding ( vellum ) for books planned to be written in. These include: accounting ledgers, business journals, blank-page books, guest logbooks, notebooks , manifold books, day books, diaries, and portfolios. The second is letterpress printing and binding deals with books planned to be read. This comprises: the library binding fine binding, edition binding and publisher's bindings. Bookbinding

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2604-779: The form of codices" and he theorized that this form of notebook was invented in Rome and then "must have spread rapidly to the Near East". In his discussion of one of the earliest pagan parchment codices to survive from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, Eric Turner seems to challenge Skeat's notion when stating "its mere existence is evidence that this book form had a prehistory" and that "early experiments with this book form may well have taken place outside of Egypt". Early intact codices were discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Consisting of primarily Gnostic texts in Coptic,

2666-559: The gamut from historical book structures made with traditional materials to modern structures made with 21st-century materials, and from basic cloth-case bindings to valuable full-leather fine bindings. Repairs to existing books also encompass a broad range of techniques, from minimally invasive conservation of a historic book to the full restoration and rebinding of a text. Though almost any existing book can be repaired to some extent, only books that were originally sewn can be rebound by resewing. Repairs or restorations are often done to emulate

2728-543: The gold-tooled leather binding has remained the conventional choice for high quality bindings for collectors, though cheaper bindings that only used gold for the title on the spine, or not at all, were always more common. Although the arrival of the printed book vastly increased the number of books produced in Europe, it did not in itself change the various styles of binding used, except that vellum became much less used. Although early, coarse hempen paper had existed in China during

2790-635: The hand. Roman works were often longer, running to hundreds of pages. The Ancient Greek word for book was tome , meaning "to cut". The Egyptian Book of the Dead was a massive 200 pages long and was used in funerary services for the deceased. Torah scrolls, editions of first five books of the Old Testament, known as the Israelite (or Hebrew) Bible, were—and still are—also held in special holders when read. Scrolls can be rolled in one of two ways. The first method

2852-426: The handling of the pages and binding has to be undertaken with great care and a delicate hand. The archival process of restoration and conservation can extend a book's life for many decades and is necessary to preserve books that sometimes are limited to a small handful of remaining copies worldwide. Typically, the first step in saving and preserving a book is its deconstruction. The text pages need to be separated from

2914-548: The lead photograph for this article). When creating new work, modern hand binders often work on commission, creating bindings for specific books or collections. Books can be bound in many different materials. Some of the more common materials for covers are leather , decorative paper , and cloth (see also: buckram ). Those bindings that are made with exceptionally high craftsmanship, and that are made of particularly high-quality materials (especially full leather bindings), are known as fine or extra bindings. Also, when creating

2976-432: The mid-15th century, bookbinding began to standardize somewhat, but page sizes still varied considerably. . Paper leaves also meant that heavy wooden boards and metal furniture were no longer necessary to keep books closed, allowing for much lighter pasteboard covers. The practice of rounding and backing the spines of books to create a solid, smooth surface and "shoulders" supporting the textblock against its covers facilitated

3038-399: The mid-20th century signature-bound appear in reprinted editions in glued-together editions. Copies of such books stitched together in their original format are often difficult to find and are much sought after for both aesthetic and practical reasons. A variation of the hardcover which is more durable is the calf-binding, where the cover is either half or fully clad in leather , usually from

3100-410: The original state of the book. The methods of restoration have been developed by bookbinders with private clients mostly interested in improving their collections. In either case, one of the modern standards for conservation and restoration is "reversibility". That is, any repair should be done in such a way that it can be undone if and when a better technique is developed in the future. Bookbinders echo

3162-455: The physician's creed, " First, do no harm ". While reversibility is one standard, longevity of the functioning of the book is also very important and sometimes takes precedence over reversibility especially in areas that are invisible to the reader such as the spine lining. Books requiring restoration or conservation treatment run the gamut from the very earliest of texts to books with modern bindings that have undergone heavy usage. For each book,

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3224-481: The portions of the scroll not being read can remain wound. This still leaves the scroll a sequential-access medium: to reach a given page, one generally has to unroll and re-roll many other pages. In addition to the scroll, wax tablets were commonly used in Antiquity as a writing surface. Diptychs and later polyptych formats were often hinged together along one edge, analogous to the spine of modern books, as well as

3286-416: The processing of almost all the operations. The process of decorating or titling a book with gold or other metals, and/or different colored pieces of leather, is called finishing and is carried out in the finishing room or department. In a hand bookbindery this area would house the dozens or hundreds of brass hand tools that are used to impress gold patterns and figures onto leather one at a time, as well as

3348-473: The spread of Chinese papermaking outside of Imperial China ), was invented in the Roman Empire during the 1st century AD. First described by the poet Martial from Roman Spain , it largely replaced earlier writing mediums such as wax tablets and scrolls by the year 300 AD. By the 6th century AD, the scroll and wax tablet had been completely replaced by the codex in the Western world . Western books from

3410-400: The style of the original binding. For new works, some publishers print unbound manuscripts which a binder can collate and bind, but often an existing commercially bound book is pulled , or taken apart, in order to be given a new binding. Once the text block of the book has been pulled, it can be rebound in almost any structure; a modern suspense novel, for instance, could be rebound to look like

3472-692: The surface that it rests on, are collectively known as furniture. The earliest surviving European bookbinding is the St Cuthbert Gospel of about 700, in red goatskin, now in the British Library , whose decoration includes raised patterns and coloured tooled designs. Very grand manuscripts for liturgical rather than library use had covers in metalwork called treasure bindings , often studded with gems and incorporating ivory relief panels or enamel elements. Very few of these have survived intact, as they have been broken up for their precious materials, but

3534-444: The surviving texts (arguably with the exception of Xenophon's Ephesian Tale ) show great sophistication in their handling of character, narrative and intertextuality . Two stories included by Reardon in his list of novels have survived only as summaries: Antonius Diogenes 's The Wonders Beyond Thule and Iamblichus ' Babylonian History . Both of these summaries are the work of Photios in his Bibliotheca . The influence of

3596-573: The town where the Byzantine monks established their first scriptorium , Byblos , in modern Lebanon. The idea of numbering each side of the page—Latin pagina , "to fasten"—appeared when the text of the individual testaments of the Bible were combined and text had to be searched through more quickly. This book format became the preferred way of preserving manuscript or printed material. The codex -style book, using sheets of either papyrus or vellum (before

3658-500: The upright storage of books and titling on spine. This became common practice by the close of the 16th century but was consistently practiced in Rome as early as the 1520s. In the early sixteenth century, the Italian printer Aldus Manutius realized that personal books would need to fit in saddle bags and thus produced books in the smaller formats of quartos (one-quarter-size pages) and octavos (one-eighth-size pages). Leipzig ,

3720-481: The vegetal and geometric designs that would later dominate book cover decoration. Until the end of the period books were not usually stood up on shelves in the modern way. The most functional books were bound in plain white vellum over boards, and had a brief title hand-written on the spine. Techniques for fixing gold leaf under the tooling and stamps were imported from the Islamic world in the 15th century, and thereafter

3782-646: Was changed to be like left to right languages in the mid-20th century. Ancient Greek novel Five ancient Greek novels or ancient Greek romances survive complete from antiquity : Chariton 's Callirhoe (mid 1st century), Achilles Tatius ' Leucippe and Clitophon (early 2nd century), Longus ' Daphnis and Chloe (2nd century), Xenophon of Ephesus ' Ephesian Tale (late 2nd century), and Heliodorus of Emesa 's Aethiopica (3rd century). There are also numerous fragments preserved on papyrus or in quotations, and summaries in Bibliotheca by Photius ,

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3844-402: Was not until the fifteenth century that books began to have the rounded spines associated with hardcovers today. Because the vellum of early books would react to humidity by swelling, causing the book to take on a characteristic wedge shape, the wooden covers of medieval books were often secured with straps or clasps. These straps, along with metal bosses on the book's covers to keep it raised off

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