the book collector
the spines of most books simply featured a pasted label of the title and author). Covers from this period make heavy use of symmetry on their borders, imagery and typography. Symmetry was believed to constitute a canon of beauty and served to emphasise the book’s supposedly high monetary worth. Similarly, the combination of gold and black gave the impression that the book was valuable and important, thus making it more likely to be purchased by awarding institutions who were keen to be viewed as benevolent by parents and guardians. The 1880s marked the arrival of increasingly more productive rotary machinery, which further reduced the production costs of books and enabled more new printing techniques to be imple- mented. Prize books from this decade show more complicated cloth grains, patterned endpapers, coloured book edges, embossed vignettes and decorative lettering. Even more importantly, whereas previously only black ink could be blocked, now any colour could be blended, thereby providing prize books with a new elegance. No longer was the book cover a simple page protector; rather, it had become an object of design that could be used to advertise the book and communicate information about the text inside. Towards the end of the Victorian era, prize bindings reached new levels of sophistication through the rise of artist-designers who created stylised designs and ornamental layouts. Late- nineteenth-century covers showcase a wide range of styles and reflect the growing popularity of the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau and Anglo-Japanese prints, both in terms of their design and typography. Titles are written in lettering with embel- lished stroke endings, high and low waistlines and top and bottom weighted stresses, while decorations feature the whiplash curves of the natural world – all characteristics of Art Nouveau. At this time, decorations also began to extend from the front cover across the spine, showing artistic leaves, vines and flowers. These features stimulated a modern renaissance in book cover design and provid- ed schools and Sunday schools with highly ornate objects which were held in high regard by working-class children not only for their aesthetic appeal but also for providing visible evidence of an achievement that could be displayed in the home.
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