EARLY CANADIAN HAND BOOKBINDING

Binding a book by hand involves the same basic operations that have been used for centuries: folding paper, gathering the paper into groups called signatures or sections, sewing the signatures together, rounding and backing the spine, covering the book, and decorating or ‘finishing’ it in some way.

Bookbinders started working at their trade in Canada after the introduction of printing in the 1700's. The first known bookbinder in York (Toronto) was George Dawson from Edinburgh, Scotland, who established himself in the town in 1817. Toronto’s first commercial directory, published in 1833, listed three bookbinders.

The simplest type of early Canadian binding was covering of thin paper glued to the spine or over the endpapers of pamphlets which had first been sewn. A more durable binding was made of paper over some type of mill or straw board, with a cloth or leather spine.

Prompted by a search for a covering that would be more durable than paper and more economical than leather, cloth became more widely used in the 1800's. This followed the development in England of a cloth that was dyed, sized, and impervious to glue. Patterns were later devised to decorate the cloth with various grains, including some to make it look like leather. The combination of cloth cover and leather spine also became popular, particularly for binding legal publications.

Full leather has traditionally been the finest type of binding. Early Ontario binders followed the standard set in Europe and the United States and used leather or part leather until cloth became widely accepted. After this leather was mainly used for religious books, for legal and government publications, and for special memorial or presentation books.

Many bookbinders who were listed in early commercial directories also worked in other areas of the publishing and printing trade. They were stationers, printers, publishers, lithographers, or engravers. Other occupations included wallpaper hanger, shoemaker, and picture frame maker.

Bookbinding was generally a male trade. However, in 1897 Minnie Prat, from the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia went to New York to apprentice with North America’s first fully qualified woman bookbinder. She then opened her own bindery. Her work was awarded a silver medal at the Paris Exposition in 1900 and a bronze medal at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901.

Interst in the craft of bookbinding has fluctuated over the years since Miss Prat won awards for her work. We are again seeing a commitment to fine binding and design binding and to restoration and conservation by practicing and aspiring bookbinders and book artists.