Mr D.S. MacColl (Plate, fig. 8).
Miss Joanna Birkenruth recalls the highly decorative medieval binding by
her use of jewels cut _en cabochon_, but set in morocco instead of gold
or silver, and there are many others who are working well and earnestly
at art binding with delicate skill and taste. Outside the inner circle
of professional bookbinders there has grown up a new profession, that of
the designer for pictorial book-covers, especially those intended to be
shown in colour on cloth or paper. Among notable designers may be
mentioned Lewis F. Day, A.A. Turbayne, Walter Crane and Charles
Ricketts.

[Illustration: FIG. 9.--Book-sewing Machine.]

_Machine-binding._--The principal types of machine for commercial
binding are described below. They are almost all due to American or
German ingenuity. It may be noted that, while books sewn by hand on
bands have the loose ends of the bands actually drawn through the
boards and strongly fastened to them through their substance, no
machines for covering sewn books will do this so effectively. All they
will do as a rule is to paste down to the inner surfaces of the boards
the loose ends of the tapes on which the sewing is done. So that,
although it may last a long time if not much used, a "cased" book is
likely to slip out of its cover as soon as the paste fixing it
perishes. Modern bookbinding machines of all kinds are usually driven
by power, and in consequence of the necessary setting of most of them
accurately to some particular size of book, they are not suitable for
binding books of different sizes; the full advantage of them can only
be taken where there is a large edition of one book.

Sewing.

Book-sewing machines (fig. 9) are of two kinds one sews the books on
bands, either flat or round, and the other supplies the place of bands
by a kind of chain stitch. The band-working machines bring the return
thread back by pulling it through the upper and lower edges of the
back of each section, thereby to some extent weakening each section,
but at the same time this weakening can be to some extent neutralized
by careful head-banding. The other system, where the band is replaced
by a chain stitch, brings back the return thread inside each section;
the objection to this is that there is a flattening out of the back of
the book, which becomes a difficulty when the subsequent operation of
covering the book begins. The s