Vellum—Calf—Pig skin—Sheep skin—Goat skin—Seal skin, etc.

Prepared skins of animals have been the most generally used of all materials for covering bindings of manuscripts or printed books. Leather is tanned skin, and the hair is generally removed. Bindings that have the hair still left on the leather are usually of an elementary kind and are intended to be carried about in pockets. They are not common. Vellum (calf skin), and parchment (sheep skin), are not tanned, but are prepared with lime and are white. Not uncommonly, especially in Germany, other skins were so prepared. Pig skin, deer skin, goat skin, horse skin, and donkey skin were all “vellumised,” and are all very strong and take excellent impressions in blind.

It is likely enough that vellum was used for the first covering of books, simply enclosing the sections, the ends of the bands drawn in, without boards. Such bindings are excellent for thin books, and they were successfully re-introduced in recent times by William Morris, always used with ties, as otherwise the vellum crinkles up.

“Vellum” bindings made now, unless specially ordered, are only ordinary bindings in boards covered with vellum. Vellum is strong, but has some disadvantages. Although gold looks beautiful upon vellum it is difficult to work, and title labels do not stick to it well. If kept near the light it turns to something very like egg-shell and chips off. This defect was known to librarians in past times, and they met it by keeping their vellum books backs inwards, the forages outwards. Many instances of this manner of keeping vellum books occur in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and they generally have their old pressmarks, and sometimes titles, written across the top of the forage. Old vellum was cut thick, and seldom ornamented, and if kept dry in the dark it is an excellent material. The same peculiarities exist in the case of parchment, which is, however, a very inferior skin, thinner, weaker, and not so good looking. Parchment is frequently described, and used, as vellum, and few purchasers know the difference; but the market value of parchment is less than half that of vellum. Vellum is particularly well suited for bindings kept in large towns, as dust does not stick to it, and it is easily cleaned. In time it assumes a creamy colour that is delightful. From the late sixteenth century until now, vellum stained green has been commonly used in England.

White vellumised leather, probably deer skin, has always been much liked in England from the time of Henry VIII., many of whose books were bound in this material: among them a copy of Elyot’s “Image of Governance,” printed in London in 1541, which is one of the first books with gold tooling upon it done in this country. Several books were bound in the same thick white leather for the other Tudor sovereigns, as well as for some of their richer subjects, but in the seventeenth century limp vellum once more asserted its sway and became very popular in England for highly valued books. The brilliancy of the gilding upon some of these bindings is quite wonderful; it is certainly doubtful if any modern finishers could equal the technical beauty of the work. Then in the eighteenth century, vellum, though still much esteemed, only took its place as a covering for boards, and once more, in the nineteenth century, Morris restored it to its proper use as a limp binding.

In 1785, James Edwards of Halifax patented a way of rendering vellum transparent, so that paintings underneath it showed through, and he used it with much success. The process has been revived of late years in England.

The Dutch binders have always liked vellum, but it is used with boards and never limp. Dutch vellum bindings are usually coloured, not well done, but at a distance they look decorative, and were certainly very popular. They often have clasps and painted edges.

A few bindings have been made in England, France, and Holland, covered with pierced vellum, showing coloured silk underneath. They are not very satisfactory and soon get out of order.

After vellum comes calf, the outer skin of the same animal, tanned. Calf is a good second, and I think altogether, up to about the end of the eighteenth century, that it has been more used than any other leather. The main difference between old calf and modern calf is that the old leather was properly tanned with oak bark or sumach, and cut thick, whereas modern calf used for binding is abominably tanned, quickly and disastrously, and cut thin. There is no better leather than old calf, and it was used universally; England, France, Germany, and Italy all liked it; it was delightful to decorate, either in blind or gilt, and it mellowed with age to a rich mahogany brown. Italian and sixteenth century English binders stained their fillets black, and several of these calf bindings, richly gilded, and with black fillets, are quite splendid, in perfect taste.

The surface of calf is smooth, and it is very sensitive to all sorts of stains.

Calf is seen at its best when it is used to take impressions from panel stamps, but its beautiful surface and sensitiveness to stains of all kinds has made it a favourite ground for all sorts of fancy markings, most of which, however charming they may be at first, end by destroying the leather.

Russia leather is calf prepared with willow bark and scented with birch oil. It is a modern leather, and lasts badly, and is generally diced,—that is to say, covered all over with diagonal rulings. It was a favourite leather of Roger Payne’s. It is said that a book bound in Russia leather will last better if much used, and no doubt this is true, not only of Russia but of any other leather. As a rule leather bindings in libraries are starved; they get dry, and readily absorb animal oil from the human hand. The truth of this may be found in the fact that numbers of dictionaries and books of reference were preferentially bound in Russia leather some thirty or forty years ago, and whereas unused books bound at the same time in the same way now show rotting leather, the reference books which have been continually used are quite sound and supple.

Cow hide is like a magnified calf leather, and shows a slightly pitted surface. It is not often used, but is of much value for very large books that are worth full binding, as one piece of hide could be cut large enough, for instance, to full-bind the Skibbereen Eagle, one of the largest Irish newspapers. It would take three or four of the largest goat skins to do this, and it is always advisable to avoid joins, wherever possible, in a binding. But there is one drawback to the use of hide for binding: it is practically impossible to cut it smooth; however skilfully it may be pared, when it gets on the book it is always ridgy. This is, of course, not very important, but it militates against the use of hide except when absolutely necessary. For the rest, hide takes colour well, and it is a very handsome leather, and when it is finished simply with very broad gold fillets it is very ornamental.

Pig skin is perhaps the most familiar of all bookbinding leathers to the outside world, because saddles are made of it. It is a thick, rich leather, and, so to speak, full of life. It is not suitable for small books, but very good for large ones, and has been used in England off and on for a long time, but never very much. Charles Lewis executed some fine examples of his larger bindings in pig skin, but I think he never cared much for it.

Pig skin responds admirably to treatment with lime, the same method of preparation as used for vellum; and this white “vellumised” pig skin has always been the most favoured material for the covering of fine German books of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Many of these bindings are perfect in their way, covered all over with delicate roll stamps showing marvellous definition and clearness on the hard white surface.

Fine though all their impressions are, it cannot be denied that they are difficult to see; the impressions are shallow, and indeed the designs can often be more easily made out by help of a rubbing with heelball on soft white paper than by examining the binding itself.

Pig skin can be recognised by its smooth hard surface, strongly pitted with bristle holes. It is closely imitated in inferior leather, bristle holes and all, and when such imitation is actually on a book it is very difficult to detect, but if in skin form it can easily be recognised. In real pig skin the bristle holes penetrate right through the leather, and show quite as much at the back as they do in the front, whereas in the imitation they show little, if at all, at the back. Also the back of real pig skin is of very firm, close texture, but the imitation shows a more or less woolly or loose grained back, as it is generally made of sheep skin. French binders have never favoured pig skin much—it is not dainty enough for them.

Sheep skin has always been a favourite leather for bookbinding, but it is not a fine leather and has never been used for first-rate binding. It has, however, been more worked up than anything else into imitations of fine leathers.

The imitation of fine leather in inferior sheep skin has been for a long time a very important industry, and it is one which is still with us. All fine leathers show a particular and well known grain on their surface, but the most largely imitated is that of goat skin or morocco.

In a well grained skin of morocco, the beautiful grain is strongly marked, whether it be “pinhole” or “straight”—so strongly marked indeed that a cast of it can well be made in plaster of paris. From such a cast a metal die can be made, and when this die is strongly pressed upon a prepared piece of sheep skin, which will take an impression extremely well, the result is that a surface is produced which is so exactly like a piece of morocco that even a leather expert may be, and often is, taken in by it. In course of time, however, the impression flattens out, and the fraud betrays itself.

When such a stamped sheep skin is new on a book, and finished with gold, no one would for a moment suspect its genuineness, but if in skin form, the back of the leather will at once betray it. Real morocco has a hard close grain, but the back of the imitation will show a loose soft texture. Other leathers are imitated in the same way: pig skin, lizard skin, and others; and although there has been, and still is, much of such imitation used in the matter of bookbindings, there is still more of it used in the furniture trade.

But putting aside these base uses of sheep skin, it has a very fair record to show on its own unaided merits. Many early Italian bindings, good ones, were made in sheep skin; certainly it has not lasted well, but no doubt when new it was pleasing enough. In England, many of the early fifteenth century panel stamp bindings were made in sheep skin, not quite satisfactory now, but also probably well enough when new.

It is impossible to say much in favour of modern roan, the trade name for sheep skin, which has suffered badly at the hands of the tanner and the dyer; also probably the binders have not been without fault, as in order to get the leather flexible for joints and bands they have acquired a pernicious habit of paring it too thin, and another, equally hurtful, of unduly pulling and stretching it so that the fibres, or what is left of them, get strained and broken.

Skiver is part of a split sheep skin, the surface of which is altogether artificial. It is much used for cheap pamphlet bindings and looks well for the moment, but is not so strong as good paper. It is wonderful how cleverly the “paste grain” or artificial surface of skiver is made; it deceives most people easily. The remaining part of a split sheep skin is prepared quite differently and is made into “chamois” leather. Although this is not used for actual bindings, it is often enough made into linings for loose covers of fine books. It does well for this purpose, but must be kept in a very dry place as it has a certain affinity for damp.

The finest of all leathers for binding is goat skin, morocco as we now call it, from the reputed land of its origin. “Levant morocco” is still the name of the finest skins. Goats, however, have of course been common enough all over the world for ages, and so we find very ancient bindings in goat skin, quite possibly the most ancient, although I rather incline to vellum in this connection.

Many of the English twelfth to fourteenth century blind tooled bindings are in goat skin, tanned brown, most likely with oak bark, and from that period until now it has always been used here, at some periods more than others.

Goat skin always shows small hair dots in groups all over its surface; it is not quite smooth like calf, and also it shows certain structural striations. In early goat bindings both these marks show clearly, and until the time of Roger Payne in the eighteenth century, the leather was left in its natural state so far as surface marks went.

Italian bookbinders at an early date saw the beauty of natural sunk lines on goat skin, and accentuated them by rubbing in gold leaf. On such bindings the markings on the leather show as fine gold lines; it is a pretty idea, and can often be found on sixteenth century bindings, especially on those that were made for Tommaso Maioli.

French morocco bindings are frequently stained with colour, particularly those which were made about the time of Henri II. in the sixteenth century. The stain is usually put on the fillets or arabesques surrounding a central oval, in which is often a painted coat-of-arms. But as a rule such coloured bindings are in calf, which takes stain more easily than morocco.

Goat leather has never been so much liked by German binders as calf or pig skin. This is partly due to the fact that German bindings are as a rule ornamented with blind tooling, and goat skin is never satisfactory when treated in this way: its grain is against it; but for gold tooling, which has been brought to its greatest perfection by Italian, French and English binders, there is nothing that gives so fine a result as goat leather.

Roger Payne saw and liked the natural grain of goat skin, or, as we may now call it, morocco. But he found that in many cases he could get a better impression from his very delicately cut stamps in Russia leather. Here, however, he was restricted to one colour, and his favourite colour, a neutral green, could only be procured in morocco. So he ironed the morocco to flatten its natural hills and dales, and produced something like what is now called “crushed” morocco. Payne’s smooth morocco is, however, not quite our modern “crushed”; it is smoother, because now we “grain” our leather strongly before crushing it, whereas Payne ironed his without first increasing its natural grain by artificial means. Morocco is often badly injured by the ironing being done with irons that are too hot.

But Payne went a step farther. No doubt he experimented much with morocco, and it is likely enough that before endeavouring to smoothen out his skins he wetted them thoroughly. If he wetted a fine skin of morocco overnight and left it alone, perhaps doubling it or rolling it up, he would have noticed next morning that the natural grain had become much intensified, due to a slight shrinkage of the leather, and showed as a particularly effective breaking up of the surface. Some such chance led him to make definite experiments with a view to exaggerating the natural grain of morocco, and he very soon found out that if a damped skin was well rolled in one direction it assumed permanently what is now known as a “straight” grain. That is to say, the surface of the leather is lined in the same sort of way as a ploughed field is, but not quite so regularly. The ridges and furrows all run in one direction. Several of Payne’s bindings are bound in straight grain morocco, but judging from his own work, he never got any farther with his graining.

At a later time, I think towards the middle of the nineteenth century, it was found out that if the process of straight graining was carried out a second time at right angles to the first operation, the little straight furrows and ridges were broken up, and a surface was produced that consisted of a series of minute hillocks, like a field that has been harrowed, and this is known as a “pin-head” grain. Both these grainings improve the strength of the leather, as it contracts after the wetting and also the wear falls on the tops of the ridges or hillocks before it reaches the body of the leather.

French binders have always preferred smooth or crushed morocco for their bindings, as it is easier to gild upon. Morocco is sensitive to damp, and if affected it quickly betrays it by giving out the strong scent of goat which is normally quite absent.

Two new leathers have been recently put upon the market as rivals of morocco: one of these is seal skin and the other the skin of the sea-lion.

Seal skin is finished in the same way as morocco and looks very like it, but it is, I think, not so good. It is softer, more full of oil and has a peculiar, almost fishy, smell. The softness of seal leather makes it unfit for binding books that are likely to have much hard wear, but the oiliness is probably its worst fault, as books standing next to it are apt to be stained. But it is undoubtedly a good-looking and useful leather, and if it can be put upon the market at a less cost than morocco it is sure to have a considerable vogue. Sea-lion skin is only fit for use on big books; it is very strong and is curiously ridged in large ridges. It has the same oiliness that seal has, but not in so marked a degree.

There are, of course, several other leathers in which books have been bound as curiosities, and these are generally noted in some way; a book in the British Museum is lettered outside “Kangaroo,” and manuscript notes are in others telling us in what strange materials they are covered. Fish skin, known as shagreen, has sometimes been used for bindings; it is very strong but inelastic, and soon goes at the joints. In the seventeenth century it was largely imitated in calf, stamped with a grain.

Perhaps the most curious leather in which any book can be bound is human skin. Such treasures are by no means unknown. It is said that a friend of Camille Flammarion the French writer, possessed beautiful shoulders, and that when she died she bequeathed her skin to him as he had always admired it. He had the skin tanned and used some of it for a binding of one of his own books, “Ciel et Terre.” There are other examples in private ownership, but so far as public libraries are concerned the only instance I know of is now in the Carnavalet Library at Paris. It is a copy of the Constitution of 1793, and is bound in the skin of one of the revolutionaries who was killed at the time. The skin was tanned at Meudon. Human skin, undyed, looks like thick calf, and it is most difficult to get entirely rid of the hair.

It is to be regretted that of late years the desire for beautifully coloured leathers has induced the need for much treatment before the dyes, mostly aniline, could be properly applied. In the course of this treatment there has been an undue use of sulphuric acid, and the presence of this acid is fatal to the lasting qualities of any leather. Attention has, however, been drawn to the evil from authoritative sources, and now sound leathers can be obtained, and it is to be hoped that the public will second the endeavours of the committee appointed by the Society of Arts by always insisting on the use of sound and certified leather to bind their valuable books in.

BOOKS TO CONSULT.

Society of Arts.—Report of the Committee on Leather for Bookbinding. London, 1905.

Library Association.—Leather for Libraries. London, 1905.