Another odd job?.....

[AnnieMack]

My great grandmother has her occupation as a Paper Folder on her marriage certificate - there was talk that my granny (her daughter) worked in a book binding factory and I wondered if it was in fact great granny instead - could this be a job in a book binders?

Annie

[Russell]

Hi Annie

You are probably right. If it was in Glasgow Collins have had a factory for years. In edinburgh Oliver & Boyd had a printing & binding business off the Royal Mile for about a century.
To produce a book after it was printed you had to collate the pages, fold the large sheets into book sized bundles, press it all flat then stitch what would be the the edge nearest the spine together. The other three edges had to be cut so each page was separate from the others in the original folded bundle.
Then they could put on the outer cover and glue it into place.
They used to use linen thread for the stitching and open muslin to reinforce the spine. All very complicated. Now with paperbacks a machine does it all but it's only glued along the spine and falls apart after 5 minutes (and I'm careful with my books!!)
Folding was very skilful so that the different pages lined up correctly.
A machine folds it now even for limited edition runs
French books used to arrive for sale with the pages still uncut!!
Russell

[ninatoo]

Annie, it could be both mother and daughter worked at the same place. I have some families where the men and women followed their parents into whatever employment they had.

Russell thanks for that information. I have three sisters who were obviously in this trade. One was a book title guilder, two were book stitchers, one of whom went on to be a paper ruler, while the other became a book folder. There was also a mention of 'letterpress binding'. A fourth sister was a case maker...wonder if that fitted into book manufacturing?

[Russell]

Hi Ninatoo

I don't know if case making was part of the book binding business but title gilding certainly was.
High quality books had leather covers on card and the best of them were embossed with the title and author. The gilder had to apply a base glue into the embossing then rub down the gilding gold leaf. Real gold!!! beaten out so thin it was thinner than tissue paper. Every scrap was gathered up after they finished to go back
Some books had stitching put into the folds of each section and the threads stuck out the back. Once they put all the sections together the stitcher linked them all together so they couldn't fall apart then glued ribbons of tape over the stitching which was then glued onto the outer covers.
The old books stayed together in a way that modern ones never could.
The 'page ruler' has me foxed unless it as called something different in my day.
Although I worked in a bookshop we were linked to the publisher/printer and I had lots of opportunities to watch tehm. Great experience

Russell

[ninatoo]

Thanks Russell,

So high quality books would have been made presumably by high quality publishers, I expect, such as Collins, perhaps? I also came up with Blackie's as a possible workplace, but both are only guesses.

The paper ruler...I was thinking it may have been the job of aligning the paper before it was cut into pages or something?

How lucky you were to see bookmaking in its early manufacture! I love books, and am trained in librarianship, so was thrilled to have my great grandmother and her sisters involved in the book trade.

Nina

[Russell]

Hi Nina

Edinburgh had a terrific number of good quality printer/publishing firms.
Churchill, Livingstones, Blackwell, Bartholomews did maps and map books. Oliver & Boyd did very traditional Scottish history and fiction books but were too late in up-dating their equipment to compete with the new printing/collating/binding machinery.
I worked in James Thin's - the University booksellers and loved it but stopped that line when I moved to Glasgow.
I think some of the Collins family are still involved in the business.

I would give up my computer for a good book!!!

Russell

[Jack]

Hi folks,
This from "A Primer of Bibliography" by Kenneth A Mallaber.1954.
(it was going cheap in the local library sale...)
--
BINDING.
A book is said to be bound when the boards are attached to the sewn sheets before the covering material is addded (eg leather or cloth).
The alternative method of protecting is by CASING.
This is the style in which publishers issue their books to the public, and the difference is that, in casing,
the cover or case (the boards & covering material) is manufactured separately and glued to the book after the sewing operation.
--
The book only mentions RULES (Type). Lengths of brass, type high, in varying thickness and patterns.
--
So Nina, the fourth sister as a case maker could well have been in the book trade too.
Russell, you have indeed been lucky in seeing it all first hand!
Jack

[DavidWW]

Up to whatever date I'm unsure, but the production process for books involved the printing of pages on very much larger sheets, which then had to be folded to get down to the level of the size of the actual pages for the book.

The results of this folding process were then bound together without separating the individual pages, i.e. the joins that resulted from this folding process were not separated. Hence the reason that an unread book from that era may still have to have the pages separated, especially if it have had never been read following the original purchase.

Very, very occasionally, it is still the case that a fault in the modern production process will occasionally result in pages that have to be manually separated.

David

[AndrewP]

A few months ago, I was involved with proof-reading a book. The proofs were unfolded and uncut. They were on large sheets, sixteen pages on each side. That is how the final books were to be printed, then stitched, cut, bound and covered (in that order?) to form a book.

The order and orientation of the pages took a bit of getting used to. The printer's software knew where and how to place these pages, but for me the layman, it set a challenge. To read each page, then rotate or turn over the sheet to find the next page. Thank goodness the pages were numbered.

All the best,

AndrewP