National Print Museum of Spain. El Puig (Valencia)
Museo Nacional de la Imprenta y de las Artes Gráficas de España. El Puig (Valencia)

Founded by Ricardo J. Vicent, with the collaboration of Vicent García Editores

BINDING

ENGRAVING

INCUNABULA EARLY PRINT

The essence of the binding process has not suffered any major variations except in quality and artistic results:

The traditional artistic binding process, when simplified, consisted in:

Preparing the body of the book (printed paper):

• • Folding the pieces of paper that come out of the printer to obtain sheets or booklets.

• • Collecting the sheets to form the body of the book.

• • Sewing the sheets, by hand or machine.

• • Gluing the spine of the book.

• • Trimming the outer edges of the book without cutting the part near the spine.

• • Placing reinforcements on the book spine to keep the sewn sheets compact

• • Decorating the book edges with ink, gold, inscriptions or drawings.

• • Pasting the endpapers before and after the body of the book. The endpapers are the sheets that join the body of the book to the covers.

Preparing the covers:

• • Trimming the covers in wood or cardboard.

• • Lining the covers: with leather, parchment or even paper.

Joining the covers and the body:
By gluing the endpapers of the body to the inside of the covers.

Decorating the covers:

• • Engraving the spine.

• • Engraving the covers.