Tordo's bookbing dump

I'm not entirely sure I did them right. The endband I was introduced to as French double core a few years back had 2 cores, but somehow I ended up with 3. Despite leaving some room for improvement, I kind of like how it came out though and for the first (the other one is still waiting to be done) I'm happy. It worked way better than anticipated.

The start was a bit fiddly, but after a few tie downs it got better.

I used a 2 mm and a 1 mm leather string for cores and a 'working thread' (which is not what the thread being wrapped around the cores is called in the book, but a secret different thread that becomes the bead). Next time I go for a smoother thread though. The 2mm is a bit coarse and the silk catches on it. I guess that's why they usually use bâtonnets made from paper. They just don't have any rough parts for the thread to catch on.

Only the backside looks a bit like a mess, but then, no one is going to see that when I'm done.

Given the lack of interest in reading, some bookbinders began to bind two books together, in such a way as to "save" volume and weight to the hypothetical readers.

It became quite common to bind two texts together such as the New Testament and the Book of Psalms in England in the first half of the 17th century.

The books were bound so that the leading edge of one was adjacent to the spine of the other.

The back cover was shared by being sandwiched between the two. By placing this book on a shelf, its spine was facing outward while that of the 'twin' was facing the inside of the shelf itself.

This odd binding style is known as dos-à-dos, a French word meaning "back-to-back."

Over time, this style was extended to more books, until we found real chains of seven volumes linked together.

Until the mid-twentieth century this way of binding books survived, then both the technique and the skills of the bookbinders, true artists of yesteryear, were lost.