Technique and Production
The techniques for producing jewelled bookbinding have evolved over the course of history with the technologies and methods used in creating books. During the early Christian or Common Era around the fourth century, manuscripts on papyrus or vellum scrolls first became flattened and turned into books with cut pages tied together through holes punched in their margins. Beginning in the fifth century, books were sewn together in this manner using leather thongs to make the bind stronger and longer lasting with wooden boards placed on top and bottom to keep the pages flat. These thongs then came to be laced into the boards and covered entirely by leather.
Boards afforded the opportunity for decorative ornamentation, with metal casings set into the wood for the installation of precious gems, stones, and jewels. The cover material would then be laid over the casings by hand and cut around the rim of the casings to reveal the jewels. The books typically bound were Gospels and other religious books made for use within the church. In the Middle Ages, the responsibility of creating adorned books went to metalworkers and guilders, not the bookbinders, who worked with sheets of gold, silver, or copper to create jewelled and enamelled panels that were nailed separately into the wooden boards.
Read more about this topic: Jeweled Bookbinding
Famous quotes containing the words technique and/or production:
“The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.”
—Pablo Picasso (18811973)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film, Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)