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Wonderful bookbindings, from a structural and book action perspective, were made in northern Europe in the 16th century towards the end of the use of wooden boards. This wooden board binding type is shown on the frontis to Douglas Cockerell's famous manual; Bookbinding and the Care of Books. 1
Wood alone is perfectly suited for precision edge beveling to seat the boards to the text shoulders and to provide strength to transmit the leverage of the boards via the lacings and vellum linings. Just as leather and skin are perfectly suited to cover the anatomy of such a binding, wood is a natural material for support and transmission of force. For centuries after the wooden board era, sewing on raised cords, lacing the cords and covering in leather persisted, but only to disguise a ruined structure and a lost dynamic of book action.
The wooden board binding is gymnastic. There is the surprising spring when the clasps are released and the text rotated open and the vellum panel linings draw the text over to follow the motion of the board. The closing action is also interesting. Laces cinch over the rounded outer bevel to force the board downward into the text while the inner bevel bites into the seat of the shoulder, molding and aligning the shoulder. There is also the strong clamping as the clasps are shut locking the text into a geometric solid. These and other balancing and tumbling actions can be recreated in binding models.
These relationships adapt gracefully to any amount of swelling in the text sewing. With slight swelling the inner bevel is near the page plane and the angle of the shoulder is slight. The rounding induced on closing is also slight and the length of the shoulder, from the seat to the fold is relatively great. Moderate thread swelling is accommodated with a greater angle of the inner bevel closer to forty five degrees. A moderate rounding is induced and the length of the shoulder begins to diminish. With a large amount of swelling the angle of the inner bevel continues to rotate toward a right angle. The induced rounding deepens while the length of the shoulder continues to diminish.
Shoulder shape with slight, moderate and more swelling.
There is an experience of real satisfaction when well beveled wooden boards are laced on tight and drawn around onto the book. There is a seamless flow of the surface across the boards, over the outer bevels and onto the folds of the text back. The graceful parabola appears from nowhere. These are all effects of wood adapted to a role in bookbinding. Of course the wooden boards are only one component of the structure, but that component is well chosen and well integrated.
With the later use of paste paper boards it became necessary to back the text prior to lacing on the boards. It also became conventional to produce a right angle shoulder to match the plow cut edges of the pasteboards. So, the relationship between a particular amount of swelling and a particular bevel angle of the boards was disregarded. Books with little swelling were hammer rounded into an arbitrary convex contour and backed to a right angle shoulder while the boards were laced on loosely and transmitted no leverage to the text block. The mechanism for mobility of the book was forgotten.
It is disturbing how different the wooden board model is from the modern leather binding now taught as an exemplar. The two contrast in details and in fundamentals. Small features contrast: the inner (not an outer) back corner of the boards; supports lacing over an outer bevel (not recessed into cut outs); simple endpapers (not complex "made" forms); a tongue corner (not an opened miter) and a graceful, dipping cap (not a flat cap).
The more fundamental differences are in overall structure and book action. The shape of the wooden board model is created naturally as the boards are laced and drawn on and the beautiful parabola suddenly appears. When unclasped, the binding gapes open slightly. Modern leather binding, in contrast, is forwarded through a series of rounding, backing and linings which are arbitrary modifications that produce a creaking book that lies shut. Our covered wooden board binding springs when the clasps are released and then rotates opened in a great arch of leaves. No page or part is not drawn into the sweep of the leverage from the board. The crippled modern binding cannot do this and the board drops away from the inert text block. The reader is left to break back page after page.
Are we observing the book as an anatomy contrasted with the book as a package? Certainly the wooden board binding responds to hand manipulation and enables the subtle motions of hand to eye reading. This is the purpose of bookbinding. The principle of transmitted board leverage, with its elegant feature of a wooden board beveled and seated to fit the text shoulder, is a fundamental achievement of codex binding structure. The supple and reactive motion of this binding anatomy provides a model, both kinetic and functional, for any bookbinder who will take time to produce it.
Some other historical features of the wooden board binding that we have come to understand are adhered endbands, vellum panel linings and clasps. The historical adhered endband is frequently discounted in reaction to the connotation of machine made headbanding. Hand sewn over a core mounted to a vellum panel lining and well adhered directly to the folds, the historical adhered endband is as reactive and effective as a sewn and tied down endband. It is also possible to put down the slips of the core to the board following covering.
The vellum panel linings are disregarded as anachronistic, but the spring and strength of these linings put down to the board are the primary means of transmission of board leverage on opening. They are the under-the-board counterpart of the over-the-board lacing of the sewing supports. They were always cut short of the space between the cords on the text back, to provide a channel for tying down the skin covering.
Clasps are also viewed as antique features, but in wooden board work the fore-edge closures are the functional counter part of the board attachments. These devices hold shut the last gape of the closed boards locking the book into a rigid, protected solid. They cannot be accidentally released to expose the book in its vulnerable opened form. They will open only with the deliberate pinch and thumb sliding away of the hook plate. This is an equivalent of the modern childproof closure for medicine. The reader alone can easily enter the locked book.
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