ABSTRACT
After the covers of the full bound book are "crushed" and the back polished, it is ready to be decorated. It is only the well-bound book which has any claim to decoration. Heaping ornamentation upon a cheap and shabbily made book is like covering a coarse and cheap garment with embroidery. One of the services which good handicraft binding has done for commercial binding is to teach this canon of taste. It is now unusual, except in the case of novels, to see decoration on commercially bound books. Dignified commercial books are usually bound in plain cloth, with simple lettering of the title and nothing else. It was quite usual a generation ago to cover books of poems, etc., bound in cloth, with senseless filigree mechanically applied.
