Volume 14, Number 1
Feb 1990

English Bookbinders in the De Coverly/Cobden-Sanderson/Cockerell Tradition: A Teaching-Genealogy

The chart on the facing page is abridged from one of a series being prepared for publication in the Guild of Book Workers Journal. The intent of these charts is to show the transmission of bookbinding skills by substantial direct teaching or shared work. Emphasis in the project is on the teaching tradition in America: although most of the binders on this abridged chart were English, all since Cobden-Sanderson have taught or had profound influence on American hand binders.

The De Coverly/Cobden-Sanderson/Cockerell teaching tradition is the best known of the English teaching lines. Binders in this line have repeated a pattern of concern for sound, functional structure as the only proper foundation for full-extra or design finishing; appeal to historical binding for models of durable structure and materials, with rejection of shoddy contemporary practices; willingness to experiment and abandon current tradition, while staying carefully within the boundaries set by the use of the book and the purpose of binding; and prominence as teachers, writers, and thinkers on binding and conservation. Cobden-Sanderson' s introduction of Arts and Crafts ideals into bookbinding is well known; there is less understanding of the subtler partial rejection, which began with Douglas Cockerell, of mindless hand work for routine production.

The prominence of the Arts and Crafts binders has obscured the underrated and seldom-mentioned apprenticeship-trained trade hand binders. Some appear on this chart, but many of the most important (like Peter McLeish, William Matthews, or Alex Vaughan) appear only on the unabridged version. It should be remembered that "apprenticeship" in England refers to a formal legal contract for a fixed term of years, normally seven, rather than the amorphous voluntary associations called "apprenticeships" in this country. Apprenticeship-trained trade hand binders often had profound knowledge and skills, but they often had to bind less soundly than their knowledge suggested lest they lose customers unwilling to pay for invisible durability. English training outside of apprenticeship was generally in art colleges and craft and technical schools; for binders the most important of these were the Central School of Arts and Crafts (1897-1960s), Camberwell School of Art and Crafts (from 1904), the London College of Printing (from the 1920s), and the Royal College of Art (1920s-1960s).

Full sources and acknowledgements will appear with full publication in the Guild of Book Workers Journal. In the meantime I must mention a similar chart which Gary Frost prepared but did not publish around 1980, and the current project of Don Cawthron, who is gathering training information for the Fellows of Designer Bookbinders. Both these projects partially overlap my own.

Teaching Genealogies II (Abridged) de Coverly/Cobden-Sanderson/Cockerell - Primary or earliest training or influence   Later training, employment, partnership f1.: Flourished," dates from beginning of training to retirement

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