Report of the Committee on Leather for Bookbinding : with four appendixes ... / Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, & Commerce.

  • Royal Society of Arts (Great Britain)
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report of the Committee on Leather for Bookbinding : with four appendixes ... / Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, & Commerce. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    REPORT OF LEATH E R THE COMMITTEE ON FOR k'O O K - B J' JST DING. Sir John Evans, K.C.B., F.R.S., Chairman of the Council of the Society of Arts. The Richr Hon. Viscount Cobham, Chair- man of the Committee. T. J. Cobden-Sanderson (Bookbinder). DOUGI.AS COCKEREI.I. (Bookbinder). Cyril Davenport, F.S.A. (British Museum Library). E. Gordon Duff (late of The John Rylands Library, Manchester). Siegmund Hermann Epstein (Leather Manufacturer). Ernest Fuller (Messrs. Bevington and Sons, Leather Manufacturers). Richard Garnett, C.B., LL.D. (late Keeper of the Department of Printed Books, British Museum). Walter J \mes Leighton (Bookbinder). The RiGHT^fbjK^SiR Herbert Maxwell, Bart., M.P:,‘F.R.S., President of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. J. Gordon Parker, Ph.D. (Director of the London Leather Industries Research Labo- ratories, Herold’s Institute, Bermondsey). William Henry Perkin, LL.D., Ph.D., F.R.S. (Past-master of the Leathersellers’ Company). Miss S. T. Prideaux (Bookbinder). Professor Henry Richardson Procter, F.I.C. (Professor of Leather Industries at the Yorkshire College, Leeds). A. Seymour-Jones (Leather Manufacturer, Wrexham). Robert Steele (Assistant - Secretary and Librarian of the Chemical Society). Joseph Zaehnsdorf (Bookbinder). Sir Henry Trueman Wood, M.A., Secre- tary of the Society of Arts. Report. The decay of leather used for bookbindings has for long been a subject which has attracted a great deal of attention and interest amongst librarians and book collectors. The first at- tempt which was made to investigate the con- ditions leading to such decay appears to have been made by Faraday, whose historic re- searches into the condition of the library of the Athemeum Club in 1842 still remain the only serious attempt made to investigate this subject.* Of late years the matter has received * Professor Faraday delivered a lecture on “ Light and Ventilation,” at the Royal Institution, on April 7th, 1843, ■which was chiefly devoted to the consideration of the ventilation of lighthouses ; in the latter part of the lecture, however, allusion was made to the ventilation of the Athena um Club. “ His new mode of ventilating burners of lamps ” is thus described. It “consists in using two glass chimneys, one within the other, the outer one being covered by a sheet of mica, and the products of combustion pass up still more earnest attention owing to a growing belief among librarians that the quality of the leathers now made for bookbinding purposes is inferior to that made previous to, say, the middle of the last century. The matter has been discussed on several occasions at meet- ings of the Library Association, and about two years ago a meeting of persons specially interested in the question was held at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in Regent- street, under the chairmanship of Mr. Cobden- the interior class chimney, and then pass down inside the outer glass chimney, the products of combustion being then received into a pipe which carries them into the outer atmos- phere.” Mr. James Faraday read a paper before the Insti- tution of Civil Engineers on June 13th, 1843. entitled: “ Description of a mode of obtaining the perfect ventilation of Lamp-Burners.” (Proceedings of the Institution, vol. ii. p. 184.) Professor Michael Faraday spoke in the discussion that followed the paper.