Bible Design and Binding

Cover to Cover: Two Good Bookbinding Methods ... and One Bad One

Ever wonder how your Bible's cover is attached to the book block? Have questions about the differences between traditional paste-off bindings and more exotic edge-lined bindings? With help from a variety of sources, I will attempt to shed light on the fascinating topic of cover construction and binding style. 

First the basics. A paste-off binding attaches book block to cover by means of adhesive applied to the endsheets, which are then pasted off -- i.e., glued down all along the length of the cover. Most Bibles are made this way, as are hardcover books. The process of attaching book block to cover is called "casing in," which is why another name for hardcover bindings is casebound. The "case" is the constructed cover. Edge-lined bindings work a little different, but we'll get to that in a second.

1. PASTE-OFF BINDING

This is what a paste-off cover looks like before casing in:

Imagine the leather upside down on the work table, nice and flat. Two large pieces of bookboard are glued down to form the front and back covers, then a thin strip of bookboard is attached for the spine. The edges of the leather are folded over the bookboard and glued down. Because the corners are rounded, the leather has to be folded in a series of puckers to finish each corner. The example pictured above comes courtesy of Nicholas Gray at R. L. Allan. It's the split calf cover from the Brevier Clarendon wide margin. 

Here's another example, courtesy Bob Groser at Cambridge. It's split calf again, this time from the Clarion ESV:

You could easily confuse the two, right? That's because they both originate in the same shop, Jongbloed. The covers are manufactured via a semi-automated process which Bob describes like this:

The leather will have been cut from the tanned hide and then pared around the edges to aid the 'turning in' of the outer cover. In the case of the paste-off it will be turned in and glued over pre-cut latex-impregnated cartridge paper (the liner). Cambridge liners have the channels along which the covers will 'hinge' cut out as 'voids' to aid the flexing of the covers.

To visualize the binding process, imagine the finished book block resting with its spine aligned along the spine of the cover, like this:

The glue is applied to the white sheet you see above, which is the underside of the endsheet. Now imagine the endsheet descending onto the cover:

And being pasted flat against the cover:

The endsheet must overlap the turned-in edge of the leather. That, my friends, is how it's done. The endsheets are glued to the book block on one side and to the cover on the other. This holds the book together. Should you decide to have your Bible rebound, a bookbinder will take the binding apart using special tools that separate sheet and cover. Or, if he's a brute like me simply curious about how books are put together, he might run a razor down the hinge in the endsheet, severing the book block away from its cover. (Bad boy.)

For a better idea of how the paste-off binding is all put together, here's a cross section provided by Margie Haley of Leonard's Book Restoration, which does lovely rebinding work. This represents the standard cover Leonard's offers:

From left to right, the first section is the underside of the leather cover. Next, the grayish section is the bookboard underneath. If you look along the bottom, you'll note that the leather turn-in, which is overlapped by the endsheet/liner. I am assured that no actual rebinding projects were injured in the course of this illustration!

2. EDGE-LINED BINDING

The second style of binding -- rarer, but quite prevalent in high-end editions -- is called an edge-lined binding. I'll admit, the first time I heard the term, I entirely misunderstood what edge-lining was all about, assuming it had something to do with the edge of the cover. Banish that thought. Instead, there are two key differences to keep in mind.

First, apart from the spine, an edge-lined binding does not use bookboard between the lining and the cover. The two layers are glued directly together, which is why edge-lined bindings are so incredibly limp. Personally, having experimented with the thinnest bookboard I could find, there is no board supple enough to rival having no board at all. 

The photos above illustrates the second difference between edge-lined and paste-off covers. The edge-lined cover has its lining attached to the cover first, not the book block. Then, flaps are cut at the spine. The book block is glued to these flaps. The photo above shows the Brevier Clarendon wide margin's cover. This is the natural goatskin cover with a blue leather lining. The point where the book block attacheds to the flap looks something like this:

As you can see, the flap extends under an attached endsheet like a tab fitting into a slot. Bob Groser describes the extra labor necessary for prepping book blocks for edge-lined binding like this:

A hand cut imitation leather or real leather 'topper' is positioned on top of the spine flap from the inside cover of the edge-lined case and connected to the endpaper by 'stiff leaving' a portion of the join to disguise the flap. Thus the endpaper is glued down about 1/4 to 1/3 of the width of the endpapers.

The amount of contact between endsheet and bookblock is actually quite similar to what you'd see in a paste-off binding, since only a strip of liner near the spine is actually glued to the endpaper. (This is why you'll often find that the stiff endsheet and the edge of your book block seem to be stuck together. They are.) Here's another edge-lined cover, this time from Cambridge's Clarion ESV. The black goatskin is lined with polyurethane, with the flaps cut in a similar fashion to what we saw above:

The turn-in on Cambridge edge-lined Bibles is also sewn for extra reinforcement. Whether this is necessary or not is a good question. The only time I've ever experienced a popped up turn-in on this kind of binding was on a vintage Bible. I think it sat in the box so long that the glue dried up. While the stitching is probably redundant, it does contribute to the overall aesthetic. The Allan cover depicted above does not have this extra stitching. 

3. BOOK BINDING GONE WRONG

Our tour of binding styles wouldn't be complete without a little horror story, would it? This one comes courtesy of Leonard's. As you can imagine, given the number of rebinding projects they do every year, quite a few interesting covers cross Eric Haley's work bench. This one left him particularly ... let's say, perplexed. After all, the printing on the back of the cover declared it to be "deluxe," but what he found under the hood seemed anything but. 

(Let me pause here to suggest that, on a quality Bible,
one ought not to find the leather grade and ISBN stamped
in gilded type on the outer cover.)

This edition was printed and bound in China. On the outside, the leather feels super soft. It reminds me of a pair of inexpensive gloves, except there's a certain thickness, a certain spongy heft to the cover. While the leather doesn't impress, the binding itself seems quite limp. Deluxe? It certainly looks the part at first glance. When Eric cracked it open, though, the story got interesting.

So the white sheets above are the endsheets. Think of the tears as excavations. The black stuff that appears to be a lining Eric believes is actually some kind of latex paint. When you pull at it, the feeling is similar to yanking on a particularly fragile balloon. Underneath that layer, instead of the underside of some fine deluxe calfskin, we find that gray stuff, a woven fabric reminiscient of a cotton T-shirt. This is what gives the cover that soft, spongy feeling. 

The spine does not feel spongy like the covers, and that's because the black pigskin board is attached directly to the calfskin. The calf itself is thin -- again, think about the gloves on clearance at Wilson Leather or somewhere similar. 

If you enlarge the photo, you can make out the notes -- including my favorite, which compares the mull used to back the spine to gauze from a First Aid kit. After picking the cover apart, the only way I can think to descibe it is this: a parody of edge-lining, with some fabric stuffed between the layers to give the impression of heft. 

Fortunately, that's not what you're getting when you buy a quality edge-lined edition from the likes of Cambridge or R. L. Allan. Whatever method of construction your Bible uses, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Quality materials make for quality covers. Good construction is worth paying for. Hand bound products will show variation. And nothing lasts forever. If you buy good shoes, when the leather sole wears down, you can have a new one sewn on. In the same way, a well-constructed book block can outlast its cover, which can be both repaired and replaced. 

Inside a Book Block

Thanks to Cambridge's Bob Groser, I'm able to offer an inside look at how a Bible's book block is assembled and prepped for "casing in" (i.e., for having the cover attached). Bob provided a trio of book blocks in various stages of completion and stepped me through the process. The Bible in question is the Clarion ESV, but the process illustrated is common to quality Bibles.

1. THE LOOSE SIGNATURES

The Clarion is printed on a Timson web press "specially configured for accurate lightweight printing." An interesting geographical note: while the sheets are printed in the Netherlands, the Timson is actually manufactured about fifty miles from Cambridge in Northampton, which is also the manufacturing center for English shoemaking.

After printing, the sheets are folded into signatures -- in this case, 80 pages per booklet, which works out to twenty folded sheets. The tick marks on the spines of each signature are designed to ensure proper order. They're numbered -- twenty-six, not counting the maps -- and the marks form a diagonal line for easy visual confirmation. 

If the Kingdom of God is already and not yet, the same might be said for this Bible. Holding the loose signatures tightly at the spine, you can flip through it and envision the finished book it will become. At the same time, the pages are untrimmed, which means the front edge hasn't always been separated. There are grayscale guides along the bottom and, of course, the whole thing is easier to part than the Nile River. 

2. THE STITCHED TEXT BLOCK
Now it's time for sewing:

The signatures are Smyth-sewn together. The trick is to do this loosely. As I learned in my bookbinding class, when a book block is bound too tightly, the pages don't open as easily as they ought. Before binding, a sewn text block will show gaps between the signatures when opened, the stitches clearly visible. The process of binding tightens things up a bit and closes those gaps.

Note that these blocks are machine-stitched. The result is a little different in appearance from hand-stitching. The former looks stronger to me -- perhaps because there are so many more holes! I've hand stitched books together, punching six to eight holes in each signature. With the machine there seem to be more points of connection. Someone with more knowledge of both processes would have to say whether one is stronger than the other. Suffice to say, Smyth-sewn bindings are very good.

Endpapers are sewn on, too, while the endsheets are "tipped on" -- i.e., they are glued. Cambridge typically uses imitation leather endsheets. In a paste-off edition, which is the traditional method, the text block is connected to the cover by pasting the endsheets down onto the back of the cover. 

At this point, the book block feels very much like a book. There are still some details missing, however. The bare spine will have to be prepped before the cover can be attached. The three edges will need trimming before they can be gilded. And we'll need decorative headbands and some ribbon to finish the look.

3. THE FINISHED BOOK BLOCK (READY FOR CASING IN)
There are two types of binding common on Cambridge Bibles, the traditional paste-off edition mentioned earlier and the more labor intensive edge-lined edition. The text block illustrated here is prepped for a paste-off binding -- specifically, the brown calfskin cover. Hence the brown ribbons and the brown-and-gold headbands.

First, the sewn book block is compressed prior to gluing -- "a rather alarming and noisy process," according to Bob. In the parlance of binding, the text block is said to have been "nipped" or "smashed." Now that the signatures are nice and snug, glue is applied and the book block is rounded, which gives the spine a gentle curve. Then it's ready to be backed. Backing consists of applying a thin layer of glue, then wrapping the spine in a net-like wrap called mull. This strengthens the spine, in particular the bond between the block and its endsheets. 

Next, the edges are trimmed and gilded. As Bob describes it, gilding is quite a complicated process:

"Three passes through the gilding machine (one for each side) then round cornered trimming and corner gilding with gold metallic foil (occasionally real gold is also used) followed by the art gilding process to give the 'red-under-gold' effect if required."

Somehow, I'd always imagined three swipes and you're done. Rounding the corners and re-gilding them came as a surprise. I also thought of gold gilding and art-gilding as two completely different processes, so the workflow interests me quite a bit. 

Applying ribbons is quite simple: they are positioned by hand then affixed with glue. The decorative headband goes on top, giving both ends of the book block a finished look. In the old days, headbands were sewn by hand, but now the near-universal practice is to use pre-made ones, even in handbound books. A wide varity of colors are available. 

For those of you interested in Bible hacks, such as adding additional ribbons, the photos above help illustrate the cleanest way to achieve a result. The easy method is to slip the ribbons down the spine and glue them in place, but this results in them traveling over the headband, which doesn't look correct. Ideally, you would need to use a tool to separate the headband from the book block, then pass your additional ribbons through the gap, pasting the headband back in place when you're done. It's much trickier, but results in a better outcome.

Now we have a book block ready to be cased in. In every respect but one, this is a finished product. In fact, I have used it in its unbound state on a number of occasions for reading. Trust me, no cover at all is the limpest binding you can imagine. (Sadly, you do end up fraying the backing, as you can see in some of the photos above.)

I'd like to offer special thanks to Bob Groser for the time he invested in illuminating the process. Needless to say, any errors in the recounting are mine alone. 

The Pocket Canon Concept Revisited

Last week's piece about Chad Whitacre's edition of the gospels has me thinking about my favorite "portion" editions. The two that come to mind are pocket-sized, single column text settings perfect in every way for serious reading. Unfortunately they are also incomplete realizations of the concept.

First, there's the ultimate example, the Pocket Canon. Then there's Crossway's similarly-sized edition of the Gospel of John. (I have a copy of the Psalms, too, but I can't seem to locate it!) 

I call them incomplete realizations because there aren't editions available for every book of the Bible. You can go much farther with the Pocket Canon, but ultimately you run out of booklets. Since these little editions seem like a perfect way to read through the Bible, I wish someone would run with the idea and do all sixty-six books. 

What there is of them, however, is magnificent:

The Pocket Canon is slightly smaller than the Gospel of John, roughly the same size as the Apica CD10 notebook I was praising last week. I could see slipping Pocket Canon and Apica into the same pocket with ease, toting them around as I read and take notes on whichever book I happen to be on. These little volumes seem especially well suited to group book studies. You'd get each member a copy, just as you would in any book group, and voila!

There is, of course, nothing new under the sun. In 1917, as American doughboys shipped off to the trenches, the American Bible Society sent these tiny Army and Navy Editions along with them. I happen to have St. John and Proverbs, perfectly sized to slip into a soldier's tunic pocket. They're very thin, staple-bound with what appears to be a paper-backed linen cover. The only downside to this kind of portability it that I doubt one of these could stop a Mauser bullet. 

Unlike the Pocket Canon, which also uses the KJV, the text inside is not paragraphed. There is no celebrity introduction in front, either. For such a small edition I find the type quite readable. 

Admittedly, I have a soft spot for little booklets like this. I think Penguin 60s are the best thing ever, for example, and I have enough of them to prove it:

To me, the Pocket Canon illustrates that with a little thought and good design, a volume that's cheaply produced can also be a thing of beauty -- and great utility. Perhaps some enterprising publisher will catch the bug and put out an entire pocket-sized canon. As Chad Whitacre demonstrates, the tools are readily available to us now. Maybe we should just make our own!

Design and Production Bible (2Krogh + Jongbloed)

One of the most interesting Bibles to pass across my desk in a long while isn't a Bible at all in the proper sense. It's the Design and Production Bible produced by Danish design firm 2Krogh and the Dutch printers Jongbloed. Thomas Silkjær hooked me up with a copy. And it's ... fantastic. The cover has a groovy shine to it, but the fireworks are inside.

The reason for the collaboration is to show what these firms are capable of. Quite a bit, it turns out. Here's the important bit:

"In this book you will find sections by 2Krogh on design & typography and by Jongbloed on printing & book binding interspersed with examples of our work reproduced in full size on genuine bible paper." 

In other words, throughout the book a series of 2Krogh designs are reproduced on various types of paper. At the low end of the spectrum, there's 22 GSM White Indopaque. On the high end, there's Primapage 45 GSM White. In the hands of a Bible publisher, this guide gives you the ability to determine in advance what a design will look like on different kinds of paper, how much ghosting there will be, what various spot colors will look like, and so on. 

For example, here's one of my favorite of the 2Krogh designs, a complex study Bible layout. There's a lot of information and it's organized well, taking advantage of spacing and color. The scripture text is set in two columns at the top, with two columns of references beside it in red. The notes are set in two wider columns below. There aren't a bunch of superfluous lines dividing everything, just a rule between the top and bottom sections consisting of red dots. Very elegant. 

And note how abandoning the nineteenth century "red letter" innovation gives a designer freedom to use color for aesthetic emphasis.

This layout is reproduced several times throughout the book on different paper. In this case, I've chosen the highest quality, Primapage 45 GSM White, because nothing is too good for the Bible Design Blog audience. The paper specs are listed in the margin above the page number:

And to give you a better idea of how opaque the paper is, here's another layout on Primapage 45 GSM White, where you can see some ghosting from the page behind. This is Bible paper, so you're going to get some. On this paper, though, it's much less noticeable than on the others.

How to quantify something like opacity? No problem. Each type of paper comes complete with a specification chart, listing weight, thickness, opacity and brightness. In this case, the opacity standard is ISO 2471, and for this paper the target is 84, with a minimum of 83. I have no idea what that means, but we'll see how it compares to other samples as we go along.

There's even a formula for calculating the thickness of your final book block depending on which type of paper you choose:

 

I should point out here something that should be obvious: I'm not as good a photographer as some of you give me credit for. I struggle especially with photographing paper. Leather I can handle, but when there's white balance to figure out, I tend to stumble. As you can see in the photo below, where the book rests on a white card, my whites are looking a little gray. (I have the same problem with laundry, if you're wondering.)

But check it out:

 

If you decide to get wild with accent colors, you can see how different PMS colors will reproduce on paper. This takes the guesswork out of printing. Those brick red backgrounds might look great on screen, but if they're going to turn out muddy in real life, why not drop them?

Here's another layout example, this time on Primapage 30 GSM White. The opacity numbers are lower here: the target is 80,5 with a 79,5 minimum. As you may be able to tell in the photo, the ghosting is more significant. It looks comparable to what you see with Crossway's ESV Study Bible, which is printed on Primalux 30 GSM by R. R. Donnelly. 

The Design and Production Bible is full of useful information for designers and publishers. For example, there's a chart indicating "efficient page heights and widths with the corresponding numbers of pages per signature." It might interest you to know that if you have 40 signatures in your book, each consisting of 64 pages, your page count will be 2560. Or it might not. 

In addition, the book showcases the printing and binding process, including some finished products that might look familiar:

I can only scratch the surface here -- there are over 800 pages -- but one thing I have to share is 2Krogh's brilliant Dwarsligger® concept. Here's how they explain it:

The Dwarsligger® is a unique and innovative book concept. The small and handy size of this book makes it easy to carry in a handbag or even in the smallest pocket. It can be read anytime and anywhere: on the train, plane or bus, during any odd, spare moment and—due to its landscape layout—while lying in bed or on the beach. 

This book no longer has a conventional left and right page. The text in the Dwarsligger® has been rotated through 90° and therefore reads "crosswise" thus creating one large page. It reads just as easily as a normal book.

While reading you can comfortably hold the Dwarsligger® in just one hand, because of its size and weight and due to its unique method of binding. The book looks like a hard cover, but is completely different, it is in fact a case bound book that is not fixed on the front.

In other words, this:

And here's an example of page layouts in that style:

 

My first thought, looking at this, is: I'd buy one. My second thought is, wouldn't this make a much better "outreach" edition than most of what's out there under that title? Instead of a volume clearly manufactured to be cheap and disposable, an innovative format like this would get passed around and appreciated. It would make a very different kind of statement.

It's a real pleasure to see so much effort going into Bible design and binding. For people in the industry, the Design and Production Bible is a must-have. I'm not sure how widely available it is—perhaps Thomas will chime in and enlighten us. One thing I do know: 2Krogh and Jongbloed are doing great work, both in terms of design innovation and quality production. The Design and Production Bible is full of inspiration.

In Search of Tan Leather Notebooks

Each summer, I travel cross-country lecturing for Worldview Academy. With two months on the road, away from hearth and bookshelves, I'm forced to think carefully about what to pack. During the summer of '08, one of the Bibles I traveled with and taught from was the Allan's ESV1 in tan highland goatskin, a favorite of mine. This prompted a mini-quest: the search for a matching notebook. 

If design and binding are relatively minor issues in the overall scheme of things, it's safe to say that color-coordination of subordinate gear is even less vital. But let's face it: if I was good at keeping the main thing the main thing, I wouldn't have a blog devoted to "the physical form of the Good Book." There's a fascinating subculture of notebook fanatics on the blogosphere, and I'm no more equipped to compete with them than I am to argue over textual variants in the Greek. This will not therefore be an objective, scientifically precise exploration of tan-colored notebooks. It's just a catalogue of the best I've found so far in the search.

Above, one of my favorite finds from the summer, the Eccolo World Traveler. It's the one on top with the contrast stitching. I'm not ordinarily a fan of the leather cover + paper insert approach, but this one was so nice I had to relent. The cover is made in Turkey and has a pleasant grain, nice to the touch. (The notebook underneath is from Aspinal ... more about that in a moment.)

The inserts seem to be sewn and glued. You can see the glue when you look at the top of the spine, but the individual signatures are intact, and stitches are visible in the gutter. 

The Allan's Journal

Last Friday, we talked about Bibles and notebooks -- and I promised to say more about the ultimate notebook, the Allan's Journal. Let's take a look ...

This is the Pocket Journal. It measures 5.75 by 4 inches, has 192 pages, and is bound in Morocco goatskin with a single ribbon marker and art-gilt page edges. A larger Standard Journal, which measures 7.75 x 5.0625 is also available.

Bibles and Notebooks

Wide-margin Bibles are one way to keep your notes, but there's an argument to be made for using a separate journal. A teaching outline can get pretty cramped in the confines of an inch-wide margin. Using a notebook gives you room to spread out. They're easier to write in, too, when your only solid surface is your lap, as is so often the case when you're sitting in church, taking notes on a sermon. Sometimes you don't want to carry all your notes around with you, either. A separate journal gives you the option of leaving them at home.

With that in mind, let's take a look at a few combinations:

Marginal Interest? Why You Need A Wide-Margin Bible

If you've been around this site for any length of time -- five seconds ought to do it -- you know that I'm an opinionated, hair-splitting sort of fellow. For everything I like about a particular edition of the Bible, there are a dozen things I want to change, and I'll be the first to admit that some of my demands are a little unrealistic. Despite what some people think, the folks who publish Bibles do it out of a sense of vocation. They're not out to shaft the end user. The generally poor quality of contemporary Bible design and binding has as much to do with economy and the changing face of publishing as anything else.

But you know what? I'm an idealist. My strategy is simple: if we're all graciously demanding, then the quality and options we see in the market will improve.

REALLY BASIC
As far as I'm concerned, some features ought to be basic in Bible publishing. Text should be paragraphed, set in readable modern type and formatted in a single column. Bindings should be genuine leather, spines sewn, and every Bible should come with at least two ribbons -- and they should be wide, too, not the dinky little strings that never lay flat between the pages. Every publisher of every translation should consider it essential to produce at least one edition that meets this criteria. Sadly, most don't publish any that do.