Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 Excerpt: ... advance by going outside the province to which it is restricted by its material, and the application of that material. Attempts by binders to invade the field of the other decorative arts, even if they are allied arts, will never really satisfactorily extend the scope of their own. May we not possibly go a step further and say that the outside should certainly not attempt to reveal the inside, that the extravagance of picture bindings are a mistake, and that the allegory of the decoration, if there is one, should assuredly not be such that he who runs can read. Of the younger generation of binders, the innovators of their day who strike the personal note in what they undertake, we will first mention M. Petrus Ruban, who, born in 1857, founded his business in 1879 and gained a silver medal at the Exhibition of the Palais de l'lndustrie in 1886. About ten years ago he started the special kind of binding to which he now chiefly devotes himself, and only within the last few years has he signed his books inside with name and date--a new departure that he considers marks the time when he ceased to do any but the most highly finished work. He has done work in each of what we may for convenience call the classic and symbolic styles. It seemed for some time as if he intended to associate himself entirely with the latter, and his inlaid morocco bindings, modelled and coloured by hand in addition, ranked with the finest specimens of their class. But he seems of late to have returned with fresh interest to that special technique of the binder--gold tooling--in which individual genius showed itself during the best period of the art. That, of course, need not be disassociated from inlay, and in the blending of harmonious tones M. Ruban shows a most delicate feeling for ...
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