the evolution of prize bindings 1870-1940
The Early Twentieth Century The Edwardian era began with the continual growth of elaborate prize book covers influenced largely by Art Nouveau. During this period, new and decorative typography continued to develop, leading the type founder, Talbot Baines Reed, to bemoan, ‘Herod is out-heroded every week in some new fancy which calls itself a letter, and which, in response to a voracious demand, pours into our market, either from native foundries or from the more versa- tile and supple contortionists of America and Germany.’ However, while the outside of the prize book boasted artistic typography and colourful designs, the inside of the book marked a stark contrast. After thirty years of trade, publishers had come to realise that the prize book was primarily purchased based on its external ap- pearance. As a consequence, they began to invest as little money as possible on its interior, using low-quality chemical wood pulp paper on which writing was printed in a highly compressed format and no longer decorating page edges with gilt. In order to ease leg- ibility, they favoured the use of Bodini, Century, Baskerville and Garamond typefaces used due to their relative clarity even when printed in small-scale. This change in production strategy led to increased profits for publishers, providing the book trade with a language for self-advertisement and marking a high point in the history of prize bindings. Not one to rest on their laurels, as Britain entered the reign of George V in 1910, the publishing industry began to capitalise on the prize book’s popularity by o V ering di V erent coloured covers of the same edition. This provided consumers with choice and encour- aged a growing commodity trade as institutions became influenced by the notion of purchasing all binding varieties for their pupils. Nonetheless, further cost reductions took place in the production of the book’s interior. This can be seen in the transition from decorative to plain and unmarked endpapers and the replacement of wood pulp paper with the cheaper and lower quality esparto (a type of grassy fibre). In addition, less care was taken to ensure that writing was set properly on the page, thus often resulting in skewed or warped print. Awarding institutions gradually came to accept that the more ornate the book’s covers, the poorer the quality of its pages.
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