III. Publishers’ Bindings

 

III. A Gold-Stamped Age
Luxurious Publishers’ Bindings

Up until the nineteenth century, it was customary for publishers to deliver books in raw quires, or fascicles, covered with wrappers - the bindings were to be commissioned by the buyers themselves. By the time of the Romantic era, in response to reader demand for books packaged for quick consumption, publishers began to offer their wares optionally ready-bound. They even began to cater to bibliophilic demands for preciousness and individuality by making a narrow segment of their editions available in richly gilded and illustrated morocco bindings. Representative of this in more ways than one is the morocco binding for Balzac’s aptly titled The Skin of Sorrow (La peau de chagrin) from 1838 [no. 14]: the central medallion, with its echoes of Rococo style, appears in the place where the supralibros (the coat of arms or monogram on the front and back covers indicating ownership of a book) would typically be. With its elaborate, epitaph-like framing, featuring the three classical muses perched on top, the design is complemented by gothic decorative elements à la cathedrale. The ornamentation of the three morocco-bound volumes of 1001 Nights (Les mille et une nuits), signed by Mugnerot [no. 446], is more true to the stories within its pages: Arabesques surround depictions of Scheherazade, a dancer, and an Arab on a camel. The floral-linear decorations are more dominant on the binding designed by Adolph Menzel for the History of Frederick the Great [no. 362]. The red morocco binding by the Prussian court binder Vogl represents Fridericus Rex by combining his initials F.R. with the emblems of the golden eagle and the lion's skin with the clubs of Hercules.

The rare luxury covers of Le diable à Paris [no. 155] play with the polarity of frame vs. centre: the central medallions, depicting the figure of the devil, visualise the book’s frame narrative, while the people and places that feature in the stories themselves are integrated into the floral borders. Also rare is the special edition binding to Musset’s Voyage où il vous plaira, illustrated by Tony Johannot [no. 461]. The gilt embossed plates of the binding offer a creative take on the book’s illustrations: on the front cover, the young man's nightmares have literally dissolved into smoke, while on the back cover two monsters pull a sled carrying the young man’s sleeping fiancee - a motif that does not appear in the book itself.

In several works shown, Grandville not only illustrated the books’ pages, but also designed their bindings. He himself designed the chromolithographic binding for Don Quixote, made from white glazed stiff boards (cartonnage), rich in gold and vivid in colour [no. 107], while the red morocco binding by Engel & Schaeck for an edition of Robinson Crusoe was probably executed by the engraver Liebherre [no. 139]. The blocks for his last work, Les étoiles, on red morocco were made by Robert Haarhaus [no. 309]. The two bindings by Louis Reybaud for Jérome Paturot from 1846 and 1849 respectively, are very different: the red morocco volume illustrated by Grandville shows the protagonist’s mock coat of arms, while the binding to the sequel illustrated by Tony Johannot is shown in a blue morocco binding depicting the instruments of the revolution - both blocks by Haarhaus [no. 537].

Whether the works were escapist or political, or whether they appeared before or after the 1848 Revolution, had little effect on the luxury bindings. This is evident in the aubergine-coloured morocco binding for the Empire de Légumes [no. 592], as well as the binding for Assemblée nationale comique with the golden cover illustration after Cham: a jester can be seen standing on the shoulders of a group of parliamentarians; he holds in his hands a quill that extends into a whip, with which he is driving the men beneath him [no. 414]. Befitting the foundation of the Second Empire is the richly gilded cover motif of Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield from 1852: a lonely reader, standing in nature, surrounded by an geometrically stylised cosmos [no. 273]. The polychrome cover illustration for Karr's Voyage autour de mon jardin also conjures up a natural idyll over a dark percaline background [no. 357]. The 1852 edition of Paul et Virginie decidedly ignores the novel’s tragic ending and instead the night blue morocco binding shows the small children blissfully asleep in a hammock in the midst of the jungle [no. 70].

 
Heribert Tenschert