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sense began with literature in a folded form, with literature in pages. A
binding, he pointed out, consists of two boards, originally of wood, now
of mill-board, covered with leather, silk or velvet. The use of these
boards is to protect the 'world's written wealth.' The best material is
leather, decorated with gold. The old binders used to be given forests
that they might always have a supply of the skins of wild animals; the
modern binder has to content himself with importing morocco, which is far
the best leather there is, and is very much to be preferred to calf.

Mr. Sanderson mentioned by name a few of the great binders such as Le
Gascon, and some of the patrons of bookbinding like the Medicis, Grolier,
and the wonderful women who so loved books that they lent them some of
the perfume and grace of their own strange lives. However, the
historical part of the lecture was very inadequate, possibly necessarily
so through the limitations of time. The really elaborate part of the
lecture was the practical exposition. Mr. Sanderson described and
illustrated the various processes of smoothing, pressing, cutting,
paring, and the like. He divided bindings into two classes, the useful
and the beautiful. Among the former he reckoned paper covers such as the
French use, paper boards and cloth boards, and half leather or calf
bindings. Cloth he disliked as a poor material, the gold on which soon
fades away. As for beautiful bindings, in them 'decoration rises into
enthusiasm.' A beautiful binding is 'a homage to genius.' It has its
ethical value, its spiritual effect. 'By doing good work we raise life
to a higher plane,' said the lecturer, and he dwelt with loving sympathy
on the fact that a book is 'sensitive by nature,' that it is made by a
human being for a human being, that the design must 'come from the man
himself, and express the moods of his imagination, the joy of his soul.'
There must, consequently, be no division of labour. 'I make my own paste
and enjoy doing it,' said Mr. Sanderson as he spoke of the necessity for
the artist doing the whole work with his own hands. But before we have
really good bookbinding we must have a social revolution. As things are
now, the worker diminished to a machine is the slave of the employer, and
the employer bloated into a millionaire is the slave of the public, and
the public is the slave of its pet god, cheapness. The bookbinder of the
future is to be an educate