In Quest of the Perfect Book
By William Dana Orcutt
I
‘Here is a fine volume,’ a friend remarked, handing me a copy of The Ideal Book, written and printed by Cobden-Sanderson at the Doves Press.
‘It is,’ I assented readily, turning the leaves and enjoying the composite beauty of the careful typography and the perfect impression upon the soft, handmade paper with the satisfaction one always feels when face to face with a work of art. ‘Have you read it?’
‘Why—no,’ he answered. ‘I picked it up in London, and they told me it was a rare volume. You don’t necessarily read rare books, do you?’
My friend is a cultivated man, and his attitude toward his latest acquisition irritated me; yet after thirty years of similar disappointments I should not have been surprised. How few, even among those interested in books, recognize the fine, artistic touches that constitute the difference between the commonplace and the distinguished! The volume under discussion was written by a foremost authority upon the art of bookmaking; its producer was one of the few great master-printers in the history of the world; yet the only significance it possessed to its owner was the fact that someone in whom he had confidence had told him it was rare! Being rare, he coveted the treasure, and acquired it with no greater understanding than if it had been a piece of Chinese jade.
‘What makes you think this is a fine book?’ I inquired, deliberately changing the approach.
He laughed consciously. ‘It cost me guineas—and I like the looks of it.’
Restraint was required not to say something that might affect our friend-ship unpleasantly, and friendship is a precious thing.
‘Do something for me,” I asked quietly. ‘That is a short book. Read it through, even though it is rare, and then let us continue this conversation we have just begun.’
A few days later he invited me to dine with him at his club. ‘I asked you here,’ he said, ‘because I don’t want anyone, even my family, to hear what I am going to admit to you. I have read that book, and I'd rather not know what you thought of my consummate ignorance of what really enters into the building of a well-made volume—the choice of type, the use of decoration, the arrangement of margins. Why, bookmaking is an art! Perhaps I should have known that, but I never stopped to think about it.’
One does have to stop and think about a well-made book in order to comprehend the difference between printing that is merely printing and that which is based upon art in its broadest sense and upon centuries of precedent. It does require more than a gleam of intelligence to grasp the idea that the basis of every volume ought to be the thought expressed by the writer