James Wilson Bright Collection
Publishers' Cloth Bindings

The 4,000 volume James Wilson Bright Collection was developed by Johns Hopkins University philologist James Wilson Bright as a teaching collection - it is known for its strengths in Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, and Early Modern English texts. The collection was purchased by Goucher College shortly before Bright's death in 1926. Having amassed contemporary publications throughout his life, Bright's books serve as an excellent showcase of the development of publishers' cloth bindings throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Once upon a time, published books were issued in sheets - essentially, in stacks of paper that the buyer would have bound in a way that suited their tastes and needs. These personalized bindings, usually in leather, were expensive and time consuming to produce. As literacy spread in the early 19th century, a new method of binding was required to meet the demands of a growing mass market of readers. Binders began experimenting with heavily starched cloth as a durable material for covering books. It worked! But some consumers and critics were not convinced of the aesthetics of having dress fabric in their library. The years that followed the invention of book-cloth saw rapid changes in designs and techniques applied to the material to suit changing fashions and expectations. By following publishers' cloth bindings from 1830-1930, we can gain a sense of consumerism and the decorative arts during the century of industrialization.

Further resources:
Publishers' Bindings through the Decades
-- A series of essays from the Publishers' Bindings Online project.
Beauty for Commerce: Publishers' Bindings, 1830-1910
-- Online exhibit from the University of Rochester Rare Books & Special Collections
The Well Dressed Book: Guided Video Tour by Rebecca Wilson and Douglas McElrath
-- Companion to the 2008 exhibit at the University of Maryland

The following links will search the Goucher College Library Online Public Access Catalog within the James Wilson Bright Collection for the index terms given. Please note that cataloging is still under way, and search results will not reflect the full scope of the collection until March 2010. The terms used are derived from the Publishers' Bindings Online Controlled Vocabulary.

Artistic Styles/Movements:
Art Deco *
Art Nouveau *
Arts and Crafts *
Cartoon/Caricature
Celtic Revival
Eastlake *
Egyptian Revival
Gothic Revival
Greek Revival
Japonisme
Modernist
Neoclassical
Orientalism
Poster Style
Rococo Revival

Book-cloth Color:
Black
Blue
Brown
Cream
Gold
Gray
Green
Orange
Pink
Purple
Red
Tan
White
Yellow

Book-cloth Grain Pattern:
Bead
Beaded-line
Bubble
Burlap
Calico
Checkerboard
Criss-cross
Crocodile
Diamond-and-dot
Diaper
Dot-and-line
Dot-and-ribbon
Dotted-line
Double line-diaper
Felt
Hexagon
Hexagon-fine
Honeycomb
Levanteen
Linen
Marbled
Moire
Moire wave
Morocco
Net
Oval-and-line
Paisley
Pansy
Patterned-sand
Pebble
Reverse sand
Rib
Ripple
Sand
Squiggle
Stepped-wave
Trefoil-leaf-trellis
Ungrained
[Unidentified]
Vermiform
Wave
- Ribbon embossed -

Bookbinding Techniques:
Azured
Beleved boards/Beveled edges
Inlay
Onlay
Quarter cloth
Black stamping
Blind stamping
Blue stamping
Brown stamping
Cream stamping
Gold stamping
Gray stamping
Green stamping
Orange stamping
Pink stamping
Purple stamping
Red stamping
Silver/white metal stamping
Tan stamping
White stamping
Yellow stamping

Specific Genres:
Pictorial cloth
Pre-ornamented cloth

James Wilson Bright was purchasing (mostly used) books in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the Baltimore area. By visualizing the various physical aspects of his collection, we can begin to get a sense of what materials were available to American makers and distrubutors of books in his time.

For instance, here's a tag cloud showing the popularity of different book-cloth colors in Bright's collection:

As the cataloging project progresses, we'll be featuring more visualizations of different aspects of the collection, and relating them to the history of the book industry and trade.