Leather as used in Bookbinding
Cyril Davenport · The Library · 1898
Leather as used in Bookbinding. 1 I N mediaeval times leather was not used for binding the more finely illuminated MSS., but only for the simpler kinds.The skins of the goat, calf, sheep, and pig were mostly made use of, but the goat skin was always held in the'highest estimation, and bore more ornamentation.In England goat skin, ungrained, was used from very early limes; in it the copy of the Winchester Domesday Book of the twelfth century is bound, then in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries work was also done in deer skin and sheep skin, the latter for the commoner books.In Oriental countries for commoner books thin sheep skin was much employed, and for finer and more delicately ornamented work and the curious open work of Persia, calf was the favourite leather; on the Continent, in France, almost all the first-rate work, old and new, is executed in goat skin, and in Germany, calf, vellum, and pig skin.The leathers now used by bookbinders are specially prepared and dressed for that purpose.They are kept soft, and as far as possible of an uniform thickness.Animal skins are prepared and made useful for bookbinding in two ways: firstly, by tanning, and secondly, they are made into vellum or parchment by an elaborate process in which lime is the chief agent.There is a third way of treating skins by means of which soft leather, like "chamois," is produced, but as far as I know these are not used for bookbinding purposes.Tanning is the mosc important of these processes, and the value of it is due to the chemical combination of tannic, gallic, or other acid, with the gelatine, gluten, or albumen, of the animal skin, with which it forms a very insoluble compound, which is the basis of leather as we know it.This process is afterwards modified by :he subsequent currying and dressing of the skin.