Bookbinding and the Care of Books

In issuing this volume of a series of Handbooks on the Artistic
Crafts, it will be well to state what are our general aims.

In the first place, we wish to provide trustworthy text-books of
workshop practice, from the points of view of experts who have
critically examined the methods current in the shops, and putting
aside vain survivals, are prepared to say what is good workmanship,
and to set up a standard of quality in the crafts which are more
especially associated with design. Secondly, in doing this, we hope to
treat design itself as an essential part of good workmanship. During
the last century most of the arts, save painting and sculpture of an
academic kind, were little considered, and there was a tendency to
look on "design" as a mere matter of _appearance_. Such
"ornamentation" as there was was usually obtained by following in a
mechanical way a drawing provided by an artist who often knew little
of the technical processes involved in production. With the critical
attention given to the crafts by Ruskin and Morris, it came to be seen
that it was impossible to detach design from craft in this way, and
that, in the widest sense, true design is an inseparable element of
good quality, involving as it does the selection of good and suitable
material, contrivance for special purpose, expert workmanship, proper
finish and so on, far more than mere ornament, and indeed, that
ornamentation itself was rather an exuberance of fine workmanship than
a matter of merely abstract lines. Workmanship when separated by too
wide a gulf from fresh thought--that is, from design--inevitably
decays, and, on the other hand, ornamentation, divorced from
workmanship, is necessarily unreal, and quickly falls into
affectation. Proper ornamentation may be defined as a language
addressed to the eye; it is pleasant thought expressed in the speech
of the tool.