The History of the Modern Book Cover

foreign tell me tell me what we're looking at here see I can see a progression right so these are decorated Publishers bindings so Publishers they were you know they wanted to sell books right so they figured out if you make a book pretty people will buy it right it's it's because people do judge books by their cover and it's Basic Marketing right yeah make a pretty people will buy it so this is a progression in time um starting in the 1830s 1840s this was an early binding right it's pretty plain not a lot of decoration you have a simple you know titling on the spine the fabric you see is patterned right right yeah it's got it was like an embossed pattern yeah um and that was you know that was basically the the design of the day and that's what the technology would allow things kept improving we moved into the 1860s now this is the time of the Civil War also materials materials start getting scarce so you have less fabric available you have less metal available so you can see the decoration on this this version of Little Women the gun reserved because right they just they don't have the materials to do it right you can't find extra fine cloth you can and so during this whole the 1860s you see that the the the the bling sort of yeah it's scaled down and it was just purely a function of scarcity fascinating okay but clearly The Bling is dialed back up here we get past that and we get into something that is more of a Victorian sort of aesthetic right very very ornate yeah bright colors brilliant red they use a lot of jewel tones so there's greens and there's blues and there's yellows and they used a lot of gold and you can see the whole like there's a whole plate that was designed to decorate it and this is this is the this is sort of imitate a hand tooling but it's industrially right right so this is all done with a plate right and it would have been at least two pressings because you've got the black and you've got the gold and each one requires a different press right okay right so you would have your your platemates in the the back is playing it's embossed oh but they didn't put the gold on it yeah look at that oh that is gorgeous isn't it great that's a gorgeous embossing too yeah oh there's a gilded on the edges yes yes we're protecting the book I have no idea it was a protective yes it's beautiful but yeah it has function everything is functional right and when we continue on so now we get into we can press with more colors this is this design itself feels almost modern I know it does and it's from the you know the late 1890s right again it would have been a plate and they didn't use they didn't use any metal they didn't use any gold it's all just ink but there's and there's two colors at least there's a black and a red yes right so that also means that those are one press for each one pressing for each of those colors exactly um and then we continue on this is 1900. this is just the best book it is again also very again it feels like quite a modern design it's really beautiful it's it's aesthetically just beautifully laid out really um lovely green you've got you've got gold you've got red this custom text treatment where the letters are joined to each other yeah clearly hand right so really and I love this because the dog just keeps going front to back and this what this is around 1900 yes okay and so there was a lot of thought put into the designs the designers they you know they would go and they'd find the very best designers they could and you know the Publishers would compete and get you know the best designer and in fact a lot of these books today when you are collecting them they are collected because of the designer not because of the author not because of what's in the book and not because it's because of the designer the designers designers art is what is really important here so I found myself wondering about this little MP here is that actually a designer's mark yes oh I'm not sure which one I'm not sure which one I don't remember but so they would they would have their Monograms within the design embedded in the design somewhere technology continues to improve right and so this is shortly after the 1900s you get you know more colors more gold this is again the 1900 this is around 1900 yes just after the 1900s crazy to me how gorgeous that is so you know and then you know this one is illustrated by Maxfield Parish field so you know they were they were going for really good artists oh wow and this is when illustrations were protected by exactly oh my gosh with printing on the tissue paper crazy yes yes wow so these would have been your your Deluxe yeah your bindings this is actually looks like almost a composite photograph it does wow terrified of harming these I just love the printing yeah this is Deluxe yes and in fact some of the like they would do um series like they would have a series of books and they would they would commission an artist to do a series of covers right and so they would be like the same color scheme this this is from a series this last one is from the series so there'd all be this this sort of light blue almost almost Periwinkle and then the artist would do like a variation and and different different theme so it was clear that they belonged in the set yeah yeah and then you would you would collect and buy the whole set right right yeah and this all encompasses about 70 70 some odd years of book binding technology and design interviews it's about 80 years 80 years yeah um because then you know when you get up into the then the dust jacket takes over and you stop having all these beautifully decorated covers the dust jacket was obviously much more economical to produce this costs money you know it was certainly cheaper than hand binding or leather binding but you know you're you're spending a little bit more for this along comes the dust cover and then you go back to a very plain cover with a beautiful dust jacket now we talked about these having different presses for each colors and I'm guessing that these pieces over here are examples of the of the pressers of these yes well so these are plates right so you can see that this is the plate for this book right and you can see that the the decoration so sometimes you needed multiple plates because look at this you have the leaves and you have the vines but you don't have the grapes and so that was a great that would be another plate as was the titling so they would leave a space where they could do the titling inside and so they could just you know they could crank these out they could just press them and then they'd add the additional decorations the grapes are a different color right it was the Riverside press okay the Riverside press was well known for making just really beautiful books this book and this plate met at the book's birth and then they've been hanging out ever since well they are now we brought them back together I love that that is awesome we had somebody give us some of these Riverside press plates because they felt like they should be preserved right yeah um and then this one this one's great because it's it's this lovely dragon and of course it's the reverse right right um now you know it's a relatively simple pressing because it's just the gold um but it's just it's such a great piece of artwork well and I mean the etching is so deep I mean it had to maintain yeah this is a really beautiful piece of equipment I also think I can see where there's some Machining away of the body at the same time so they're not using acid for everything they had a they had a they had several machines they had a pantograph to like put the design on it and then they would machine away the the the metal that they didn't want right so it feels somewhat magical to see the thing that made that thing in the book a hundred years later that they're still together exactly yeah bars and things like that this this you know this was you could reuse these you could use them in different books but you can see that it is the pattern that was used you know do a really pretty effect really beautiful effect um and they could have a library of these and sort of assemble any kind of assembly exactly you know they could mix and match they could we've got more like so we've got like you could have this little frame and then you there we have like a picture of a a person looks like William Shakespeare right then you might have like a a small frame where you could put your titling so they could mix and match now the machine that would emboss the foil into into this book with this you guys have one that would be a stamping press it's heating up well the these with the plates you need a stamping press okay a stamping press or an arming pressure boxing press but just to do titling uh you know just to put like titles on and this was this machine was really more for sort of the single practitioner the Publishers would be trying to move things early they'd be using big machines there's tons of pressure and stuff like this but we have a quick a Quick Print and it you could have your book bound and you would get your name put on it oh this would be how you'd personalize yes so this isn't an industrial machine it's more of a later yeah I think it was more for um you know like the the private book binding shop yeah um and and not necessarily for the Publishers can we take a look we can [Music] tell me about this machine okay this is still totally functional and it's what like 100 years old I don't think it's that old I would say it's probably 50 60 years old okay all right um this is a at the all-purpose Halverson Quick Print uh and it's used for anything from a book to a steamer trunk so this is really a machine for a bespoke kind of I want to add my name yeah or if you are a book binder you use it for titling things so you would that's a little of the foil yeah here we go that's it that's it oh okay so I would probably want to check and make sure that it's but that was I had no idea it took so little it's just magnificent well the the whole uh Force multiplier and there's an ancient these cloth covered wires are feeding this ancient heating element and it's terrifying yes when you stop and think about it it's like geez give it a tug oh really yeah sure oh yeah okay here we go you don't you don't even have to push it that hard really it's oh it smells good there you go yes look at that I think I need to reseat my type that's the worst thing we learned today so this was oh and is this a pressure or is that the temperature oh look at that and there are different colors of foil you could do red or black or have you at this working with this equipment must give you this great insight into into the past it's like a time machine it is a little bit uh and I I do a lot of stuff about the past and history anyway so that this is just it's both charming and this is really cool and then you think if you're the guy who's sitting there going it's like time to make the donuts over and over again uh and it is a craft they're still doing it at the the government printing office really oh yeah um is is the lamp did the lamp come with it when you guys acquired this that is also operable or if you don't have your machine in a brightly lit space yeah yeah amazing

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 46,033

Keywords: tested, adam savage, adam savage tested, museum, museum tours, bookbinding, book making, book cover design, history of book covers, american bookbinders museum, book covers, book cover, gold foil embossing, gold foil embossing machine, gold foil embossing on leather, Anita Engles, adam savage bookbinding, how hardcover books are made

Id: vgKZciIEorA

Length: 12min 35sec (755 seconds)

Published: Fri May 19 2023