Book Review

The Archeology of medieval Bookbinding. By J.A. Szirmai. Aldershot, England and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing, 1999. Xvi, 352 pp. $149.50. ISBN 0-85967-904-7.

This publication is a text book on the structure of early codex bookbindings. John Szirmai has gathered, organized and commented on the literature and field studies and he has compiled, tabulated and interpreted his own detailed census of confirmed period bindings. He has provided all this information in the context of a very readable and excellently illustrated narrative that leaves the student with a compelling interest in the meaning of early bookbindings and a poignant appreciation of the uncertainties of their survival.

The work investigates Western bookbinding structure spanning more than a thousand year period from late antiquity to the turn of the 17th century. This period encompasses the emergence and early dominance of the codex format book. The period is also one that confronts and resolves the technological challenges of binding all three of the basic codex sheet materials of papyrus, vellum and paper.

The book is organized into two major divisions of ÑThe Mediterranean heritageâ and ÑThe medieval codex in the Western worldâ. The first division provides chapters on the first single-quire Coptic codices, the first multi-quire Coptic codices, late Coptic codices, the Ethiopian codex, the Islamic codex, and the Byzantine codices. The second division provides chapters on Carolingian bindings, Romanesque bindings, Gothic bindings and limp bindings. Each chapter is supplied with fascinating notes and all cited works are gathered in a (0 page biography

One consequence of the organization of the book is to give emphasis to the earlier cultural and technical legacies of structures featuring unsupported sewing using thread alone. The contrast of these Mediterranean technologies with later European technologies of supported sewing augmented with thongs, cords or straps is well balanced by Szirmai who also provides notable commentary on the mysterious transitions and interactions between these two fundamental traditions.

Just such interactions, between different traditions are at the core of John SzirmaiÇs book. This is due in part to his presentation of the entire cultural expanse of early book construction, but it is also due to his concern with bookbinding as a continuous process. Szirmai estimates that no more than 1-5 % of the early books surviving are in their initial bindings. Even books discovered archeologically and preserved intact for more than a millenuim have quickly fallen victim to cursuory disassembly. So this work is also intended to sensitize institutions and wider society to the hidden content of historical evidence in bookbindings. Szirmai confronts this task not through argument or lecture so much as through numerous reminders of the delicacy and vulnerability of any discipline based on forensic examination.

Every reader will experience SzirmaiÇs determination to illustrate indifference to the physical delivery mode of books. In one example of a rebound ninth century manuscript Szirmai cites the cruciality of the lost evidence that could have described a transition from link-stich to herringbone sewing on supports. Ñ(It) escaped rebinding in the major refurbishing operation in 1457, but was later ruthlessly butchered and rebound in 1972; no original consitiuent was kept and no record written.â P. 97 Szirmai, realizing how much information is at risk, is either enchanted or distraught by the condition of an early book.

To return to the theme of this work as a standard text lets look at its infrastructure of terms both verbal and visual. A disappointing aspect of the current work was SzirmaiÇs decision not to provide a glossary. While he cites a deference to a lack of consensus, a glossary of terms would be helpful if only to ease the reading of his own narrative.

Intermittantly Szimai does provide definitions, as with the ambiguous pair of Ñspineâ and Ñbackâ. But here his negotiation of bodily anatomy imposed on geometric anatomy does not suggest a systematic approach to terms in general. The needed approach can be almost wordless in terms of the layered sets of structural features. Sewing should encompass macro types such as unsupported and supported sewing, which would then be described interms of sewing patterns which are described in terms of sewing stitches. The stitch should be defined and then it can be disscected into its motions. Likewise Ñbookbindingâ should be defined leading to structural types such as case construction, laced case construction, laced construction which are further defined by components such as textblock and cover which have subsets of their own. Terms of orientation to the symmetry of the codex should be defined. The helper terms primary, secondary, tertiary should not be neglected, but utilized everywhere in text sewing, endbanding, lining, tacketing and covering.

Without the discipline of a glossary inconclusive terms can creap in. Examples of these are Ñhinging loopsâ for a primary bridle stitching in the boards or Ñintegral sewingâ to lump together all variations of fold sewing other than those that use a conventional change over stitch type and position. These are examples of terms that could have been further scrutinized in a process of glossary construction. Glossary construction would also invite closer inspection of the features of mobility and book action which Szirmai certainly wishes to consider. Somewhat malapropted considerations such as spine concavity as a deficiency or 180 degree board opening as an assumed mobility would have been reconsidered if influence of transmitted board leverage and the function of under the board lining attachments had been specifically defined.

The reason to criticise Szirmai terminology at all is that it achieves such precidence in the context of this major publication. Another type of terminology, spanning all languages, which Szirmai has well provided, is his visual terminology of technical illustration. Overall, this work presents the reader with a vivid interaction of illustration and text.

SzirmaiÇs own drawings and photographs are utterly clear and informative. He must be credited with superb skill in depiction of stitch motions and sewing patterns even using the curved needle to wonderful and economical visual effect. One concern is the diagramatic array for the basic unsupported stitch chains (p.17). In this composite depiction the paired station patterns are not well sorted from intermediate station patterns. The drawn tension at these different positions does influence the chain appearance and stitch configuration. Further among the fundamental stitches (indicated by Greek letters) the loop (exit/reverse/pick-up/climb/re-enter) is omitted.

Beyond such detail what larger influences can be expected from this major work? Certainly it will provide precidence for future gathering and tabulation of binding features. Techniques used such as the Ñchi-square testâ and other census evaluations that Szirmai has applied will provide a guideline for students. Likewise this work will provide the portal to further layers of content and interpretation that study of historical bindings and historical documentation can provide.

The Szirmai work opens the way to interpretation of workshop methods and bindersÇ intentions. Does the pronounced round of the Gothic type binding suggest hammer rounding or inadvertant press rounding? Evidence of crushed folds under the caps and the illustration of glueing in the press (de Bray, 1658) could imply either. I happen to favor inadvertant press rounding since I have observed endpapers debossed with the untrimmed darts of the thong slips and have also noticed the shoulderless flattening exactly as depicted by deBray. Just such press rounding, as set by in-press glueing, would ready books for plowing out-of-boards. Gradually, then, by the positioning the relevance of just such observations, the Szirmai work will serve to energize the study of bookbinding.

The Szirmai work also provokes international cooperation. His bibliography and commentary presents a landscape of somewhat issolated national literatures and somewhat clositered collections. Yet this work perfectly illustrates the benefits of comprehensive integration and comparison such resources. This work provides a foundation for an international discipline of bookbinding studies. And such contact is now facilitated by electronic communication as exemplified by the newly established Association for the Recording and reconstruction of Historical Bookbinding;
http://aeb.sbb.spk-berlin.de/indexe.html.

Finally SzirmaiÇs work positions the study of bookbindings in a wider academic context because his reach across cultures, languages and periods is managed with such objectivity and grace. His distinctions of Carolingian, Romanseque and Gothic technologies also provide insights into a process of the conservative transmission of craft skills engendering the unpredicatable influence of books. Humanist researchers of all kinds will find in the Archeology of Medieval Bookbinding a story central to the success of the codex format and to the storage and transmission of knowledge. These are not trivial issues and Szirmai fulfils the role of humanist while counting stitches.