Books · a Light

The flap on an old book cover is structural, not decoration

The Islamic book got a binding of its own. Its boards are pasteboard, layers of waste paper pasted up rather than the wooden boards of the European codex, so the book is light. The sewing runs without cords across the spine, which leaves the back flat. The cover has a fifth part, a flap that comes off the back board, crosses the fore edge and tucks under the front, closing the book against dust and holding the text block square. Books were shelved flat, so titles were written on the fore edge rather than the spine. Decoration was stamped into damp leather with cut brass tools and, from the fifteenth century, tooled in gold. Historians of binding trace European gold tooling back to these workshops, reaching Italy by way of Venice and Naples.

Islamic bookbinding · from the 9th century