History
THE HARCOURT BINDERY OF BOSTON: HISTORICAL NOTES / Helena Wright
In turn of the century Boston, the arts of the book enjoyed a certain prominence. This was the heyday of the private press movement,1 and men like Daniel B. Updike and Frederic W. Goudy were active in typography and book design on the local scene. Associations such as the New England Bookbinders Guild and the Club of Odd Volumes were formed about this time, and interest in books-especially fine books-ran high. Frederick J. Quinby and Harry L. Chatman appeared in the Boston Directory of 1900, doing business as Frederick J. Quinby & Company, "Publishers and Importers, Rare Books and Fine Bindings." Later in that year another partnership was formed as Huegle, Quinby & Co., bookbinders, at 17 Harcourt Street. The binder was Leopold A. Huegle, whose son, John, was also involved. By the 1902 issue of the directory, Quinby’s advertisement had added the phrase "Proprietors Harcourt Bindery," giving the name which is in use today.
Both Leopold Huegle and his son John died in 1906 and thus were spared when Frederick J. Quinby became embroiled in one of many "deluxe edition" scandals of the period. There were several schemes whereby wealthy widows paid enormous sums for "limited" sets of the classics, extravagantly illustrated and bound, but hardly worth the tens of thousands of dollars paid for them. One of Quinby’s editions was a fifty volume set of the French author Paul de Kock, in full leather with silk doublures, bound by his Harcourt Bindery. The quality of this work was no doubt well up to the standards of the day, and we would quarrel only with Quinby and his marketing methods, as did the courts! Few volumes ever reached the hands of the purchasers.
This relatively racy period in the bindery’s history was over by 1910, when Quinby disappeared from the Boston Directory. The name Harcourt Bindery remained, however, and its craftsmen were saved further embarrassment when the bindery was purchased by Oakes and William H. Ames of North Easton and Gilmer Clapp of Waltham. These men, who incorporated the business in 1911, were wealthy patrons of the arts who wished to support a craft in the best tradition of the day.
Following the impetus of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement in England in the late nineteenth century, prominent Bostonians had organized an exhibition of arts and crafts in 1897 which led to the formation of the Society of Arts and Crafts. This organization, incorporated "to promote artistic work in all branches of handicraft," included a number of bookbinders who submitted work in the Society’s exhibitions in 1897, 1899, 1907, and 1927. The future of hand binding appeared to be promising, as stated in the Department of Bookbinding section of the Society’s 1907 exhibit catalogue:
In this country, some fifty years ago, according to Mr William Matthews, there was not a finely bound book in any collection except what had by chance been procured abroad It is no longer necessary for the book collector to risk sending his precious volumes across the water to be bound. All that we are obliged to ask of France and England now is the leather with which to encase these books, for in technique and in beauty of design, the American craftsman bids fair to outrival all others.2
The craft was well represented in Boston at this time. The Boston Directory for 190 listed forty-seven bookbinderies. The Massachusetts State Census for 1905, Schedule of Selected Occupations for the City of Boston, tallied a total of 1452 men and women employed in the trade. That a fair number of these binders still carried on the hand tradition we know from the nature of the operation at that time, and from their advertisements in the Boston directories.
Hand work in fine leather has always been the specialty of the Harcourt shop. The late Fred Young, employed at the Harcourt Bindery since 1917, and owner from 1931-1971, recorded some of his recollections about clients and commissions shortly before his death in May 1977. While most of the work was for private customers, collectors, and dealers, after World War I a great deal of the business came from the West Coast. Interior design firms, such as Cannell and Chaffin of Los Angeles, ordered numerous sets of the classics, bound in full leather, to line the walls of private libraries in the homes of Hollywood stars and other wealthy Californians. Books seem to have been considered a decorative feature in the 1920’s: numerous articles in House & Garden, House Beautiful, Woman’s Home Companion, Good Housekeeping, and Arts & Decoration advised how rooms could be planned around the colors of bindings, even suggesting pertinent titles appropriate for specific colors!3
From the early years of the century until the Depression, the Harcourt Bindery employed about fifteen people. Then, in the 1930’s, names began to drop from the payroll until, at the worst of the pinch, only five were employed. An edition binder named Dykeman, owner of Coleman’s Bindery in Boston, bought the Harcourt in 1927 but found difficulties in managing a fine hand bindery. He soon sold out to the shop’s best customer, a Boston book dealer named Thomas W. Best, who succumbed to the financial pressures of the times and sold the business to Johnston and Young in 1931. At the height of the Depression, the Harcourt was in the unusual position of competing against itself, for many of the fine libraries bound there in the past turned up in New York auction houses, at prices below what the bindery could then offer to dealers and collectors.
As with many other businesses, the beginnings of World War II in Europe brought a new stimulus to hand bookbinding. With European communications interrupted, bindings which had been commissioned abroad were executed in the United States. The Harcourt acquired new customers, such as Maurice Inman of New York, who had previously sent his work to England. Fred Young recalled that from a small start, the shop was suddenly catapulted back into huge volume. “Fortunately, there was a box factory on the first floor which was going out of business. The men employed there were all hand craftsmen who had been making special boxes and cases of leather and fabric. We hired many of them and found it easy to retrain them and introduce them to aspects of fine binding.”4 Harcourt had weathered the storm, but the Rose Bindery of Copley Square, one of their chief competitors, went under in the 1930’s. Once the old competitors dropped away, no new ones appeared. It was even difficult to attract new help, which made the box makers so welcome to Fred Young. The bindery was holding its own, but it was becoming alone in its field.
The crafts movement in New England had also managed to survive the Depression and the two World Wars. In 1943, the Worcester Art Museum sponsored an exhibition of Contemporary New England Handicrafts in which the Harcourt Bindery submitted eight of the eighteen bindings exhibited, more than any other binder represented. Selected items from this exhibition were later shown in Boston.
Fred Young (the forwarder), and his partner, Walter F. Johnston (the finisher), worked at the Harcourt Bindery for a combined total of more than one hundred years. Johnston, who began at 15-17 Harcourt Street and helped move the bindery next door to 9-11 Harcourt Street in 1916, was already foreman when Young joined the staff in 1917. They bought the business together in 1931, and Johnston died in 1969. Young, who sold to the present owners, Samuel and Emily Ellenport (GBW), in 1971, continued to assist them with special work until his death in the spring of 1977.
Frederick W. Young in the Harcourt Bindery (Photograph by David Akiba).
There have been many special commissions for the bindery over the years. Custom slipcases were made to hold the sleeping cap of Charles Dickens and the stolen door-key to the honeymoon suite of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Many important religious works were bound, the Memorial Edition of Science and Health for the Christian Science Church, and special bindings for the Vatican Library and the Episcopal Church. Prize books for universities and colleges, and publishers’ gift books are among their annual output.
The craft tradition of the hand bindery survives intact at the Harcourt Bindery. The Ellenports came from academic backgrounds, bringing to their work a love for books, fine detail in hand work, and rapport with other book people, librarians, dealers, publishers, and collectors.
Although it is a commercial operation, the bindery relies solely on hand production, from sewing and leather work to the final touch of the finisher in gold leaf or blind stamping. Sam Ellenport is the forwarder in the family; Emily is the finisher. Together with their co-workers they case, repair, box, and gild, providing special bindings for new editions or preserving the old. The bulk of their work is for libraries, collectors, and dealers, who have been the clientele of the bindery from the beginning.
Much of the shop’s equipment dates back to the beginning of the business, and the ambience is certainly turn of the century. There are five gas fired glue pots and four gas finishing stoves. Electric power for the lights, skiving machine and power cutter comes from direct current. Among other mechanical aids are four Imperial arming presses, one Kensol stamping press, three standing presses, and three job backers. There are eight glider’s tubs, each with a capacity of forty-eight books. In the finishing department are more than 2500 hand tools, including fillets, gouges, left and right corner tools, center tools, and emblematic stamps. There are 250 decorative rolls, 150 plate dies [see Sam EIlenport’s description of these dies following in this issue], and six sets of alphabets. The bindery must be seen to be fully appreciated!
Sam Ellenport at one of the glider’s tubs in the Harcourt Bindery (Photograph by David Akiba).
In addition to being one of the few remaining hand binderies of this scale in the country, the Harcourt has another distinction. It is one of the places where the craft of hand binding is taught. In a sunny room adjoining the shop, facing Copley Square, the Ellenports conduct regular classes in basic binding, leather work, and finishing. Special workshops also take place here: sessions for edition binders, dealing with problems in leather repair, hand backing, and the priorities of rare/semi-rare titles in the general library bindery. The Harcourt school room is also the location, since 1974, for the papermaking lecture and workshop of Busyhaus (Robert Hauser, GBW), providing the base for Boston sessions of this unique approach to paper education. Since 1975, Harcourt has offered full day workshops in edge gilding and box making; they plan to add marbling in 1978. Tools, supplies, and a fine collection of hand marbled papers are offered for sale through the bindery catalogue as well. The spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement and the individual approach to hand work in the book arts have been maintained in Boston by the efforts of many, including the craftsmen in Harcourt’s proud history.
1. Susan Otis Thompson, "The Arts and Crafts Book," in Robert Judson Clark, ed. THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT IN AMERICA 1876-1916. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972, p. 95.
2. EXHIBITION OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTS AND CRAFTS TOGETHER WITH A LOAN COLLECTION OF APPLIED ART, February 5-26, 1907. (Boston: 1907), p. 10.
3. Margery Doud, "Books for the Home, a Selection for Both Merit and Color," HOUSE BEAUTIFUL, May 1921, p. 528. Even Aldous Huxley, writing on "Book Rooms of Beauty and Charm," in HOUSE & GARDEN, Sept. 1921, made the statement that "One of the decorative advantages of books is that they fit conveniently into narrow places." (p. 52)
4. Typescript transcription of recorded interview with Fred Young made by Sam Ellenport in the spring of 1977.
Emily Ellenport in the hand finishing section at the Harcourt Bindery (Photograph by David A. Krathwohl).
BRASS PLATE DIES OF THE HARCOURT BINDERY / Samuel Ellenport
The Harcourt Bindery was founded in Boston in 1900. It was one of the many extra binderies working at that time for an enthusiastic market. Like its competitors, Harcourt flourished yet remained small, employing perhaps a dozen workers, of whom many had been trained in Europe. The bindery made use of an electric paper cutter, and later a skiving machine (both still running on direct current), but its focus was on the manually operated gilding tubs, job backers and standing presses, the gas heated glue pots and finishing stoves, and the gas-driven blocking and arming presses.
As far as can be told, the Harcourt Bindery was a typical extra bindery of the turn-of-the-century. It has remained so to today, staying as small as it was, a shop of several binders skilled in forwarding or finishing, working by hand with the finest materials in the traditional methods and standards of the craft. By circumstance or perhaps design, almost every other such bindery has since disappeared (many, like the Rose Bindery of Boston, during the Depression); the few remaining have succumbed to a change of purpose or. in some cases, have simply grown into a different type of commercial bindery altogether. In our times, the Harcourt Bindery has become a unique enterprise as well as an anachronism.
The brass plate dies in the collection of the bindery are an historical record of what a typical extra bindery would have at its disposal for stamping covers and doublures. The brass plate dies comprise only part of the Harcourt collection of finishing tools which also includes corner dies, various connecting lines and linear designs, center devices, seals and monograms, punches for onlay work, and the usual hand stamps, rolls, and fillets-all of which date from 1900.
While different types of book cover decoration have always been an integral part of the binder’s art, binders have most often decorated books by impressing a design into the surface of the leather. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, two distinct types of cover decoration can be recognized. First, there was a continuation of the Romanesque style: lines or rolls divided the cover into compartments which were filled with impressions of small, engraved stamps. In the second type, the cover was dominated by a large central panel set off by a series of lines. This panel was impressed into the leather from a single block or die on which the design was cut. Such panel stamping became popular throughout Europe, and reached its height in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. For a number of reasons, it had almost died out by the late sixteenth century.
The technique of stamping the large, engraved panels into book covers introduced an early form of mechanization into the craft. For while the presses used were hand-operated, it was the mechanical action of the press which produced the design from the engraved die. The early presses had no known means of holding the dies, which were probably tied to the dampened bookcover, the entirety then being tightened in the press, usually producing a blind design. The presses worked on a screw principle like today’s nipping press, rather than a simpler lever principle which can exert more pressure but demands a larger and heavier machine, such as the Imperial arming presses which were incorporated into the craft in the 1830’s.
The technique of stamping corners and cover designs was revived soon after the Restoration in France in 1815, and gained almost immediate recognition throughout Europe. From the 1820"s onward, cover designs stamped with floral or gothic patterns came popular. The growing demand for books--and an increasing machine technology--fostered a greater use of plate dies, which, when set up on the newly introduced arming presses, could increase production well beyond the abilities of binders working solely by hand.
Until the nineteenth century, the demand for extra-bound books had been met most economically through hand work and improvements (or shortcuts) in hand techniques. With the surge in demand for books in extra bindings, hand work could no longer keep up with demand without technological aids, one of which was the reintroduction of the use of plate dies.
This picture of a section of the finishing area at The Harcourt Bindery shows three of the four gas-driven Imperial arming presses, used to stamp covers and doublures. The lever being pulled raises the bed of the press, in this case ligting the inside cover to the doublure die attached to the heated element. The wheel at the top raises and lowers the bed. (Photograph by Terry R. Harlow)
The bottleneck for the speedy production of an elaborately tooled binding had been the finishing end of the bindery. Aside from the time needed to train skillful finishers, it was simply unsound economically not to seek out every possible means of speeding production of books which at least had the appearance of technical and artistic virtuosity. And the growing popularity of sets, or "definitive" editions, demanded a consistency which was difficult to achieve without recourse to mechanical aids. Handwork simply proved inadequate to fill the need for supplying masses of books promptly and consistently--and economically.
The use of dies in book cover decoration did not necessarily signal the subordination of quality to economic consideration. At first, the use of plate dies was a legitimate extension of the finisher’s craft. After all, the setup was demanding; the die pattern had to be incorporated into an overall design which included spine decoration; great accuracy was necessary; and the means of impressing the gold or blind patterns onto the covers followed traditional methods of using heat and pressure. However, when the forwarding and finishing processes became secondary to the shortcuts introduced to speed production, when covers were produced like cloth cases and were stamped off the book, when no hand finishing was done at all--it was only then that the potential for this skillful and imaginative use of dies was betrayed.
The legitimate use of brass plate dies developed in two principal directions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First, dies were cut to copy and imitate previous successful designs such as those of Grolier, and the fanfare, pointille, and cottage styles. Such "retrospective" bindings had begun as early as the eighteenth century in France. In the nineteenth century book collectors avidly sought to satisfy their antiquarian interests by encouraging binders to dedicate themselves to reproducing earlier designs or creating designs appropriate to the period in which the book was published. This vogue has continued into the present, focusing great interest on the historical styles of cover design. Many nineteenth century binders used plate dies to capture the flavor of the successful bindings of the past, thereby avoiding the necessity of cutting many new hand tools, employing exceptionally talented finishers, or investing in the incredible amounts of time and patience needed to produce by hand a single period-style binding, let alone a multi-volume edition. The legitimate use of brass plate dis developed in two principal directions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
A typical period die, this one represents a "Grolieresque" design (5 1/8" x 8 1/4"). Note the ruled border which makes it difficult to use the die for more than one size cover. Also apparent is the axial symmetry found in almost all dies through the end of the nineteenth century.
The second line of development is the one which I believe is the more vital and creative. It did not imitate the designs of the past, but rather drew on contemporary preference, the flowing lines which culminated in what we now know as Art Nouveau. Late in the nineteenth century, men like Cobden-Sanderson incorporated into their designs for bookbinding decoration much of the romanticized interpretation of the Gothic, especially in their extensive use of curving lines and flowing patterns. While such designs were difficult and time-consuming to execute by hand, they embodied a new sense of freedom which broke with tradition, especially in that they used space and geometry in a less rigid way than did most previous styles which almost always exhibited axial symmetry.
As Art Nouveau designs were incorporated into the repertoire of binderies producing extra bindings in quantity, they demanded extra finesse in stamping procedures. Unlike earlier patterns, Art Nouveau designs were often asymmetrical. The openness on the die created a stamping problem. Balanced designs yield a uniform pressure when the die is stamped onto the cover; unbalanced patterns distribute pressure unevenly. With an unbalanced pattern, the heaviest part of the design yields less pressure than the lightest part, so that a die which was "busy" at the bottom and had only one or two single lines trailing to the upper portion of the cover, ran the risk of cutting right through the leather when it was stamped. Solving problems such as these helped to raise stamping to a binding discipline in itself.
The small selection of dies shown on these pages represents a typical collection used in an extra bindery active during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These dies exhibit almost all types of period styles, as well as the more innovative Art Nouveau. The plates show incomplete open dies which had to be hand-finished. There were also onlay dies, which have corresponding dies and punches so that the leather onlays could be stamped out at great speed. Some dies are of a period style, complete in themselves, and some designs even come in two sizes in order to produce a common cover and doublure design. Many of the dies have large cut-outs so that a special monogram, seal, or other decorative centering device could be employed. The inter- changeability of dies was important to distinguish one limited edition from another, or to personalize an otherwise standard extra binding.
These dies (4 1/2" x 7 1/2") are “open” dies of nineteenth century design. They have no exterior rule or border and could be used on covers of different sizes, or on doublures, with only a single line roll needed to complete the pattern. Such partial hand work would imply that the entirety is done by hand. Note that the floral design can accept onlays.
These depict a cover and a doublure die. Notice that the doublure die is smaller and has a single line border which can be used as a guide in trimming out for the inlay. The cover die is “open.” Both show axial symmetry and are effective with onlays.
One of a pair of cover dies which comprise a "right" and a "left." The pairing allows the design to face the same way on both covers. This "open" Art Nouveau die is asymmetrical and presents difficulties in stamping. It was meant to have a variety of colored onlays.
This represents one of the most versatile and intriguing die arrangements in the Harcourt collection. The pattern is comprised of three separate dies. The arrows show where the left and right sides meet, and if one looks closely at the stems of the roses, one can see other breaks which are formed by an interior die. The three part die allows the design to be used on covers and doublures of many sizes, as a continuation of lines can link all the parts. It is also an "open" die, which underlines its versatility. It is also suitable for a variety of onlays.