Binders’ Gatherings

The binder rarely initiates the contents of a book, but instead deals with matter presented to him by his client, whether that be a scribe, a bookseller, a printer or an institutional or private owner. The most common exception to this rule is the manufacture of blank books where, of course, there is no content to get in the way, and the textblock presents quite literally a tabula rasa to both binder and writer. In most cases, however, binders were handed texts in either manuscript or printed form, as gatherings in a predetermined format and in most cases with a sequence of spine folds through which the binder could sew the gatherings to make a structure. From time to time, however, the printer or scribe presented books in formats (or without any coherent format at all) that presented difficulties to the binder. Such works might be presented in single sheets that provided no spine folds at all, as folded plates, the folds in which could not be sewn through without damaging or obscuring the images, or in single bifolia which did not provide enough thickness to accommodate the sewing thread within a manageable bookblock. Alternatively, the binder might be required to resew a damaged book where the spine folds were too badly damaged to sew or indeed split into single leaves, where conventional sewing techniques could not be used.

In order to create viable bookblocks, binders presented with such problematic textblocks resorted to a number of strategies to create out of what they were given the gatherings they needed in order to sew the books and allow boards and/or covers to be attached to them. These are what I call ‘binders’ gatherings’, as they are quite distinct from the gatherings envisaged by the writers or printers of books, and often cut across them in ways that can confuse those who try to work out how the books were first printed or written.

For obvious reasons, before the introduction of machine-made paper and the possibility therefore of endless lengths of paper, the size of the hand-made sheets was a controlling factor in the creation of books, and the larger the dimensions of the leaves of a book, the more likely it was that the book would consist of leaves made from single sheets. This applied in particular to large-format atlases and illustrated works, which became increasingly

Fig. 1a.

A diagram showing the compensating guards used to create a sewn bookblock in a copy of Robert Dudley, Dell’Arcano del Mare, Florence, 1661 (The National Trust, Blickling Hall).

Fig. 1b.

The spine at the tail edge of the bookblock, showing the compensating guards as a darker area across the edge.

popular in the seventeenth and through the eighteenth centuries. In such cases, binders would often attach paper guards to the spine edges of the leaves and fold several together to create gatherings, as in a copy of Robert Dudley’s Dell’ Arcano del Mare of 1661, in a binding of the 1720s, now at Blickling Hall in Norfolk.¹ In this instance, the binder took three or four leaves at a time and pasted guards of a thinner paper to their spine edges, so that when they were folded together to create the spine folds, the folded guards would be of the same thickness as the leaves — hence the name ‘compensating guards’ (Fig. 1a). The width of the guards can be seen at the head at the head and tail edges of the book, where they form a darker area across the spine end of the edges. (Fig. 1b)

Fig. 2.

A compensating guard attached to a folding plate, showing how the plate opens almost flat when the book is opened.

The advantage that the guard gives to the book is that it throws the plate out at a distance from the spine and allows the entire leaf to be seen without difficulty. This is of particular value for folded leaves, as in the large...