Boards—Usually made of stiff cardboard (or, occasionally, wood) and covered in fabric (cloth, paper, leather).
Covering—Cloth, paper, or leather fabric used to cover the boards.
Endband—Small ornamental band of cloth glued at the top and bottom of the inside of the spine, used to give a polished finish to the book (also called a headband or tailband).
Endsheets—The first and last sheets of the textblock that are pasted to the inside of the cover board; the pastedown.
Flyleaf—First one or two blank pages of a book, not pasted to the inside of the cover board. These pages protect the inner pages of the textblock.
Foredge—The front edge of the textblock opposite the spine edge. The edge is usually smooth but may, on occasion, be rough, or deckled. The edge may be gilded or, in rare instances, painted. Fore-edge painting gained popularity in the seventeenth century when religious or pastoral scenes were painted onto the foredge to embellish the book’s content. The painting was invisible until the pages were fanned in a certain direction.
Grain—The direction in which the fibers are aligned in the paper. When grain direction runs parallel to the spine, the paper folds will be straighter and stronger and the pages will lie flat.
Head—The top of the book.
Hinge—Inside the book cover, this is the thin, flexible line where the pastedown and flyleaf meet and is the most easily damaged part of the book.
Joint—Outside the book at the point between the edge of the spine and the hard cover that corresponds with the inside hinge. Its flexibility allows the book to open and close.
Linen tapes—Strips of linen sewn onto the signatures and used to hold the signatures together. The tapes run perpendicular across the spine edge and are pasted down between the cover boards and the endsheets.
Pastedown—See Endsheets.
Signature—A gathering of papers that are folded and sewn to make up the textblock or the pages of a book.
Spine—The back edge of a book, where the pages are sewn and glued.
Swell—Term that indicates the way paper lies after folding. Generally, the folded edges of a stack of paper will be thicker than the outer edges. Consolidating and rounding the textblock will reduce swell and allow the book to lie flat and even.
Tail—The bottom of the book, where it rests when shelved upright.
Textblock—The sections of paper sheets or signatures sewn through the fold onto linen tapes.
OTHER BOOKBINDING TERMS
Conservation—The care and preservation of books, often at a total resource level—that is, a library or the archives of an institution. Conservators will take into consideration the damaging effects of age, use, and environment (including light, heat, humidity, and other natural enemies of paper, cloth, and leather) and strive to apply their knowledge of bookbinding, restoration, chemistry, and technology to the restoration and protection of the collection under their care.
Consolidation—Once the textblock is sewn and pressed, the spine should be consolidated (that is, compressed, in a press) and coated with adhesive (PVA). When consolidation is completed (the glue is dry), the textblock is rounded by pushing and pounding against the sections, first one side, then the other, with a bookbinders hammer.
Kettle—The kettle actually refers to the first and last holes (usually found at each end of the page) where the stitching together of the signature pages begins and ends (or reverses back to the beginning). The kettle stitch refers to the stitch used to sew one signature page to the next, linking the next page to the previous one, as well as binding the linen tapes to the textblock.
Restoration—The process of returning a book to as close to its original condition as possible. A book restoration specialist will pay close attention to the materials and techniques in use at the time the book was first made, and will attempt to follow those guidelines in terms of resewing, rebinding, and reconstructing the book. This is in contrast to book repair, which does not encompass restoration or conservation but focuses strictly on bringing a book back to its basic functional level (which may or may not involve duct tape).
Rounding—The process of hammering or manipulating the textblock spine into a curved shape after gluing and before backing. Rounding diminishes the effect of swelling and helps to keep a book standing upright on a shelf.
SOME BASIC BOOKMAKING TOOLS
Awl—Used for punching sewing holes in folded paper.
Bone folder—A tool used for making sharp creases in folded paper and smoothing out surfaces that have been glued. It is generally made of bone and is shaped like a wooden tongue depressor.