Glossary A-G

adhesive binding

an adhesive binds the gatherings together without sewing or wire-stitching; the clamped book has folds at the back removed or ground away leaving roughened edges, often stopping just short of the head and tail (so that the book looks sewn); caoutchouc or gutta-percha (rubber-based) adhesive used first, according to GG, William Hancock, English, 1836; used first according to JC, Thomas Hancock, ca. 1840; later animal glues used

albumen
egg white; proteinaceous and soluble in water, coagulated by heating; ingredient of glair (GG)

all-over design

term used to describe the design that is carried over the entire book cover, not unrelated decorations or embellishments of a cover and spine (ED)

American joint

in binding when the boards are set away from the back or spine so that a space is left into which the covering material is pushed to form a groove or gully (GG)

American Russia (American russia, E.)

strong, split cowhide for book covers (GG)

antique

bookbinding term used to refer to blind tooling, especially that done before the introduction of gold tooling in Europe in the mid-15th c.; an emulation of an “old” style (ED, JC)

antique gold edges

a dulling finish given to gilt edges, either by leaving the gold unburnished or by washing the burnished gold with water; designs are sometimes tooled onto these edges, blind in patterns, usually a diaper (GG)

antique laid paper

paper formed on a hand papermaking mould where the wire cover is woven in a pattern comprising horizontal wires (laid lines) secured together with two intertwining thinner wires, spaced about one inch apart (chain lines); usually along the chain lines, this cover is attached to the bottom section of the wooden mould frame with thin wire to the ribs underneath; as the watery pulp is attracted to the latter areas, a larger number of fibers accumulate on either side of the chain lines, and these appear as dark shadows in transmitted light (DH)

antique wove paper

paper formed on a hand papermaking mould where the wire cover is woven as in a plain textile weave; cover is attached to the bottom section of the wooden mould frame with thin wire to the ribs underneath; as the watery pulp is attracted to the latter areas, a larger number of fibers accumulate over the ribs, and these appear as dark shadows in transmitted light (DH)

aquatint

an intaglio process by which a tonal image is created through the manipulation of either powdered rosin or a vehicle-rich varnish; the areas of the copper plate that are left exposed after the application and melting of the rosin or between the islands of the reticulated varnish are etched in an acid bath, forming a pitted surface that holds the ink; by burnishing parts of the aquatint with a smooth piece of metal in a handle, whiter areas within the darks are produced; by “stopping out” large areas during etching, a variety of shades can be produced, emulating watercolor washes, hence the name for this process (BG)

arabesque

embellishments taken from Greek and Islamic ornamentation usually of the acanthus leaf and vine, flowers, other leaf shapes, curved lines, etc.; any intertwined design that is calligraphic in nature; used often for borders (GG, ED)

architectural binding

a design on the covers using architectural themes (GG)

arming press

originally, a hand-operated, screw press in which heated metal blocks or stamps were used to impress coat-of-arm designs into leather covers; in 1832, the screw press was replaced by a lever-operated ones, such as the Imperial Arming Press; the increased pressure from the latter allowed the use of much larger metal stamps to impress designs into book-cloth in blind, gold, and/or ink (GG, ED)

armorial

featuring an owner’s coat of arms, usually stamped in gold on leather (JC)

art gilt edges

book edges colored under gold to complement the color of the binding material (GG)

assisted morocco

inferior goatskin, embossed with the characteristic grain of better qualities of morocco and boarded (GG)

author’s binding

copies of a book bound to the specifications of the author for presentation purposes, usually in a better style and materials than the edition binding (GG, JC)

aux petits fers

decoration on book covers resulting from the use of a combination of small, single tools to build up complete patterns (GG)

azured tool, azured tooling

a finishing tool with usually diagonal, closely hatched (parallel lines) lines either without any other design or contained inside the outline of a design, such as a leaf; so called from the use in heraldry of fine horizontal lines that symbolized the color “blue”; use dates from 1550; azured stamping is a mechanized technique that mimics the look of azured tooling (GG, ED)

back

the part of the book formed when gatherings are sewn or wire-stitched to produce a flat surface (or the surface to be coated in an adhesive binding); may be kept flat, or rounded and backed to give a convex shape (GG, JC)

back corner

beveled, upper and lower corners of both boards at the joint from the front of the board to the back; results in easier opening of the boards and provides room for headbands (GG, ED)

back matter

the printed material following the text, such as appendices, endnotes, glossary, bibliography, index (GG)

backing

after sewing and reinforcing the back with an adhesive, the back of the book is rounded to form a convex shape; with the textblock is clamped in a lying press and the cover boards in place at the joint, the rounded gatherings are coaxed with a backing hammer into a curved shape, working from the center of the textblock to each side to create the fanned out shape of the gatherings, the first and last of which extend to the outer edge the boards; 1850, Charles Starr, English, took out patent for a backing machine (GG, ED)

backing press

an iron, horizontal press with one fixed and one moveable jaw; the top part of each jaw slopes slightly to aid in deflecting the hammer blows during backing (ED)

bands

the covered, raised cords, real or false, on the spine that divide it into sections (ED, JC)

basil

an unsplit sheepskin that is vegetable-tanned; a poor-quality leather, sometimes artificially grained to simulate more costly leather; England from early 19th c.; sheepskin that is dyed a crimson color and heavily polished, used for ledgers, etc. (GG, ED, JC)

beveled boards/ beveled edges

usually 45° angle cut, sawn, or sanded; in binding, the shape given to thick boards, before covering, sloping from the outside to the inside of the board, usually stopping just before reaching the inside edge to leave a small section of the original board square; makes thick boards look thinner, less clumsy and emulates earlier binding styles using beveled-edged wooden boards (GG, JC)

binder’s board

general term referring to a composite board consisting of laminates of paper; boards are 0.012 inch (12 points) and stiff; made from a variety of fibers; in early books, boards were planks of wood, usually oak; boards provide protection to textblock and are almost always fully covered with one or more materials that attach the boards to the back at the spine and carry decoration on the outside of the book (GG, APPA, ED, JC)

binder’s embossed signature

in addition to binder’s tickets and pallets, some binders blind-embossed their names into the front flyleaf, see Allen (RBS Course Timeline) (RE)

binder’s ticket

a small, printed label, located on an inside cover (not to be confused with the bookseller’s ticket); a mottled orange, gray, or black discoloration is often present on these tickets printed on coated paper, where white lead has been used as a pigment (GG, JC)

binder’s title

the title as lettered on the binding (cover or spine), that is different from that on the title page, or on the original cover if rebound or on the original spine if rebacked (GG)

binding press

small, bench presses as well as tall standing presses; pressing was used in a number of processes, primarily to flat newly folded gatherings, and to keep lined boards and covered books flat while drying from one bookbinding step to another (GG)

blank leaves

leaves (2 consecutive pages) that are not printed upon, but are part of the imposition plan of the book; so-called printer’s blanks should be distinguished from binder’s blanks, which are added to the front and back of the book and called endpapers (JC)

blind tooling, blind stamping

tooling or stamping impressed into the surface of covering material without any gold or ink; hand finishing tools, heated, are pressed into dampened leather, with a resulting darkening (drawing color) of the leather in the blind tooled areas; stamp panels into leather for overall, larger designs; heated stamps pressed into grained cloth with an arming press, which causes a depressed flattening of the grain and a slight darkening (GG , ED, JC)

bocasin

a fine-quality buckram (GG)

bole

usually a red clay, although bole can be white (similar to kaolin or China clay); dusted or mixed with glue and painted on edge(s) of book under gold to give the gold greater depth and luster; also serves as the size onto gold leaf is applied; because this is water-gilding, the gold can be burnished (as opposed to oil-gilding which cannot be burnished); best bole is from Bohemia, Italy, and Armenia (GG, GS, ED)

book cover

covers can be made of paper, board, stiff cloth, or leather, used singly or in combination, and usually covered with material(s) (leather, paper, and/or cloth) that hold the book covers to the textblock and that often serves as a surface for decoration; includes the upper and lower covers, but not the spine (GG, ED)

bookbinder

a person who binds books for a living; until the 18th c., bookbinders either temporarily bound sheets for sale by the bookseller (so-called trade bindings) or were commissioned to bind single books according to the owner’s wishes; once edition binding became the normal for most published books, the bookbinder could either carry on as before, or join a large bindery to work on some aspect of edition bindings (GG )

book-cloth

1. any of a variety of dress textiles used to cover unique books

2. 1825, Archibald Leighton, English, developed a filler for the cloth so that glue could not penetrate through the cloth; by 1830s, to imitate leather and silk, book-cloth was patterned with a grain (GG, JC)

book-cloth color

usually refers to the color of book-cloth prepared by dyeing the fabric and then filling it with colored paste; a bright or deep red color was popular from 1848–1860, see Allen (1998); for a discussion of systems for identifying color related to book-cloth, see Tanselle (1967)

bookplate

a printed label that includes the owner’s name, and usually the words “ex libris” and a design; usually located on the front pastedown (GG, JC)

bookstamp

a stamp, rubber or metal, used to impress in ink the owner’s name in the book; also a blind, embossment (JC)

border

1. a continuous, decorative design arranged around lettering and/or an image on a page or cover; can be made from a mortised wood- or metal block comprising the entire border or made up of individual pieces of rule, type flowers

2. a frame made by either palleted, filleted or stamped lines, or by building up sections of the border with smaller decorative tools; in blind, gold, or ink (GG, JC)

boss

raised ornament in silver or brass on book covers, upper and/or lower; usually located at the corners; protects highly decorated covers from abrasion, for embellishment alone, or occasionally, in the 19th c., to emulate much earlier covers (GG, ED, JC)

bound book

term that refers to a book in which the cords (or some other material, such as thongs) are laced through the boards, as opposed to a cased-in book (GG, ED, JC)

brass stamp

a plate of brass engraved (etched and/or routed) with the image in reverse and in relief for stamping (blocking, E.) leather and cloth covers and spine: blind, gold, or in ink; occasionally, the engraver’s name appears somewhere in the design or near/in the border, more common between early 1840s and late 1870s, see Allen (1979) (GG, ED)

Bristol board

fine-quality cardboard, usually with a smooth surface suitable for drawing and printing single sheets; originally made in Bristol, England, it was a laminate of papers adhered together; now a thin cardboard made on multi-cylinder papermachine (GG)

broadside

1. a sheet of paper printed only on one side, often a full sheet or one cut in half

2. a newspaper of a large size (GG, JC)

buckram

strong fabric of jute, cotton, or linen, filled and sized, glazed and stiff; used since 1860 for book covers; single or double warp (GG)

burnished edge

colored edge(s) of a book rubbed with wax and polished with a burnisher (agate or bloodstone set in a handle) (GG, ED)

calender

to press between two or more cylinders under pressure (APPA)

calf

calfskin with a very smooth finish and grainless surface, commonly used in 18th-c. England for “trade” or semi-permanent bindings, while rest of Europe used paper covers; many different names given to calfskin bindings (GG, JC)

calf-finished lambskin

split sheepskin with a smooth finish resembling calf (GG)

caliper mark

incised lines or tiny holes left behind by the caliper, or compass, used by the finisher to mark out position of tooling and lettering (GG)

cameo binding

covers inserted with a cameo, first seen in Italian bindings from 1500–1560; later, a stamped or embossed image resembling a cameo appears on the cover(s) (GG, ED)

cancel, canceling

a page printed to correct an error and tipped onto a stub left behind when the incorrect page was cut out (GG, ED, JC)

canvas

coarsely woven linen or cotton cloth used to cover books; thicker and more durable than book-cloth but inferior to buckram; late 18th c. to 1830, plain canvas covers used on school books and on books sold by chapmen (but not considered chapbooks); also appeared on the spines of late 19th c. books of the Arts & Craft Movement with plain paper sides, usually blue, brown, or gray (GG, JC)

carbon black

any of several types of black pigment used in inks made by partial burning a variety of materials: natural gas, oil, wood, bones, and mixed with a drying oil (GS)

cardboard

laminated board either of individual sheets of paper and an adhesive or made on a multi-cylinder papermachine (no adhesive); early types of cardboard had burnished surfaces (GG)

cartouche

enclosed space for lettering, motifs, images, e.g., maps; a scroll with rolled ends enclosing a title (GG, JC)

case

a mass-manufactured, off-the-book-constructed cover and spine, which is adhered to the textblock by adhering the super and/or tapes, then the first and last sheets of endpapers as pastedowns to the inside of the covers; case consists of two boards, a thinner strip of cardboard, thick paper, or hollow for the spine, all which are adhered to a large piece of book-cloth (or paper); extra margin of board at head, fore-edge, and tail for the squares with enough margin for turn-ins

cased book, cased-in book

bound book, laced-in book (GG, ED, JC)

catchword

a word printed below the last line of the text, near the fore-edge, on the recto page that denotes the next word on the succeeding page; useful when collating gatherings (GG, ED, JC)

chalking

any situation when the vehicle in ink or colored paste evaporates or deteriorates to the point that the pigment is powdery and lighter in color than originally (GG)

chamfered edge

usually 45° angle cut or shape; in binding, the shape (usually through the use of an abrasive) given to thick boards sloping from the front to the back, usually stopping just before reaching the back edge to leave a small section of the original board intact; makes thick boards look thinner, less clumsy and facilitates opening (GG)

chapbook

usually a cheap, paper-covered booklet or pamphlet sold by chapmen or hawkers, about 6 x 4 inches and 24 pages; often decorated with woodcuts; in America, seen from 1725–1825 (GG, JC)

chased edge

gilded edge of a book decorated by the finisher with heated finishing tools, called goffering tools, to produce a wavy or crimped effect (GG)

chemical wood pulp

fibers for a good-quality paper made by debarking trees and cutting them into uniform chips of wood, followed by chemical processing in digesters at high temperatures and under pressure; the resulting pulp, after bleaching, contains very little or no lignin (APPA)

cheveril

a leather made from the skin of the guinea deer (ED)

chipboard

cheap paperboard made from recycled paper and other fibers; of low density and relatively weak (APPA); thin, hard-surfaced gray board (ED); laminates of pulp, no adhesive; often used for cases (GG)

chromolithography

lithographic printing in many colors, each having its own stone; 1837, Engelmann, France; appeared in English books in 1839 (GG)

circuit edges

excess covering material, usually limp vellum, leather, or paper, which turn in to protect edges of the text (GG)

clamshell box

a hinged, three-part, protective container for a book that folds into a tightly closed box (GG, JC)

clasps

brass or other metal pieces secured to the outside covers, usually two at the fore-edge; used to keep the book closed so the parchment leaves (especially) did not cockle or warp (GG, JC)

cloisonné

images made by soldering one edge of metal strips onto a metal, usually copper, sheet forming outlines; the interiors are filled with a powdered glass paste and fired into hard, glasslike enamel; in binding, a style that resembles the jewel-quality of cloisonné (GG, ODA, ED)

cloth boards

1. stiff cloth bindings with no boards (GG)

2. wooden boards with a thick metal strip that protrudes slightly over one long edge placed into the groove in a French joint in a case to set the joint during pressing (ED)

3. a kind of binder’s board (ED)

cloth hinge

on inside of the joint, a piece of cloth is attached to the board under the pastedown, is pushed down into the groove, and is then either sandwiched between the endpapers and the first gather or adhered to the recto of the flyleaf; an embellishment, especially for doublures (GG )

cloth-faced, cloth-lined

referring to a cheap cover material made of paper covered on one or two sides with linen or cotton (GG )

coated paper

text, illustration, and endpapers that are coated on one or both sides with a mixture of pigment(s) and a vehicle; early 19th c., the endpapers were pastel in shade, while between 1855 and 1885 darker colors were used, see Allen (1998); if white, basic lead carbonate is used alone or with other colors, gaseous pollutants or sulfide pigments can change the white component to a salmon, gray, or black color, causing discoloration sometimes mistaken for mold damage (GG, GS)

Cobb’s paper

thin, matte, self-colored paper for endpapers and sides of half-bound books; 1796, James Cobb, English, papermaker (GG )

colophon

found in early printed books until about 1570, and later in the private press movement at the end of the 19th c.; for the latter, a paragraph or page describing who made the book and the materials used, e.g., paper, typeface, endpapers, leather; often found at the end of the book (GG, ED, JC)

colored edge

edge(s) of book tinted with a dyed or pigmented ink; may be coated with thin layer of wax and burnished; applied with a brush or sprinkled on with textblock in a clamp (GG)

colored paper

paper that has been dyed in the beaten or vat, thus colored through the sheet (RE)

compensation guards

narrow guards, located in the gutter, that run the length of the page, which are sewn in in order to compensate for the bulk nearer the fore-edge of folded maps, charts, etc., so that the book lies flat (GG)

conjugate leaves

1. two leaves of a book adhered together to form one leaf

2. the other half of a leaf as sewn in a book, not necessarily the page opposite; for example, the conjugate leaf of pages 1/2 in a quarto is pages 7/8 while pages 3/4 is conjugate with pages 5/6 (GG, JC)

continuous guard

a piece of paper folded as an accordion or concertina that goes behind each of the folds through which the gatherings are sewn; used to protect the back folds of materials such as vellum from the adhesive applied to the back after sewing (GG, ED )

copyright page

page usually on the verso of the title page upon which the copyright information is printed: date, copyright holder, country of publication, other copyright notice and rights information (GG)

cords

thick, multi-ply threads of hemp or flax used as sewing supports for back of book; used either as round cord or unwound and used flat; in the former, the thinner sewing thread is wrapped around the cord, while in the latter, the thread goes across the cord; if kept round, the cords show as bands on the spine of book, raised cords; France, late 16th c. to mid-17th c. and England until 1710, recesses sawn into the back for the cords, thus a flat-back produced, recessed cords; sawn-in cord style was quicker to sew, but when glue is applied, it seeped into gaps in the folds and an inflexible back is created and to temper this, the hollow-back was first used in France in 1772; in board attachment, the cords (rounded or flattened) can be laced through the boards from the outside of the board to the inside; the ends are splayed out (slips) and with glue or paste, hammered flat against the inside of the boards; in 19th c. books, slips were sandwiched between two pieces of board (split board construction), which were then adhered together; or the slips were adhered to inside of covers and pastedown applied, as in cased-in books (GG, ED)

corner

triangular pieces of leather, cloth, or paper placed across each outside corner of the book covers; depending on the proportion of the size of the corners and the depth of the spine covering toward the center of the cover, such books are often referred to as half- (smaller) or three-quarter (larger) bound (GG)

cottage binding

a style resembling a 17th c. binding decoration, associated with Samuel Mearne’s workshop, which features small tooled designs in the shape of a gabled roof (or broken pediment) (GG, ED, JC)

countermark

in paper watermarking, the design, usually a name, initials, device, and/or date, that often appears on the left side of a sheet opposite (counter) to a pictorial design appearing on the right half (GG)

cover

the upper cover is the front and the lower, the back of the usually covered board or limp material used to protect the book; upper and lower covers are preferable terms to front and back as the latter could be confused with the back of the back which refers to the folds of the sewn gatherings (JC)

cover board

cover material made by pasting together two pieces of cover paper (GG)

cover paper

strong, thick paper used as wrappers for brochures and pamphlets; plain or embossed surfaces (GG)

cover title

the title of the book stamped, lettered or printed on the cover of the book; may be an abbreviation of the title as it appears on the title page (GG)

creaser

an iron finishing tool used to burnish straight and curved lines, see Johnson

criblé

a pattern, design, or image made up of dots

cropped, cropped edges

severe trimming of textblock, usually while being rebound; cutting into the text (GG, ED, JC)