"Conan The Librarian" wrote...

Oooooh ... I just *have* to hear why you (or anyone else, for that
matter) need access to 75 years of _IB_.


Chuck Vance (not that there's anything wrong with that)

Well.... I do social/labor history. I was really struck by David
Montgomery's _Fall of the House of Labor_ , especially the first half of the
book, where he describes the transition some workers made, because of
industrialization, from artisans (skilled, independent work --think
blacksmith in his own shop) to "operative" -- someone really good at a very
small portion of a manufacturing process, like the person who sewed the
botton on a shirt a million times a week. Throw in a lot of Herbert
Gutman's "pre-industrial" culture as class identifier and source of class
consciousness and strength, and add a lot of Leon Fink's occupational
culture studies, and Sean Wilentz' concept of artisan republicanism and
description of the commodification of labor and you have the somewhat muddy
framework for my studies.

Ok...so this transition (artisan to operative) has happened in many
industries (most, actually) and has been documented a half a zillion times
by half a zillion historians. So what? How do the bookbinders fit in?

(Cue up Twilight Zone music)

Imagine if you will DaVinci. True artist...a national treasure of
Renaissance Italy, no? Ok, so now imagine DaVinci being alive to see the
process of creating frescoes change from an artist with brushes and paint to
one where wallpaper is used. A major change, no? One might even consider it
a shocking change. One most likely worthy of study, me thinks.

The early (pre-industrial...pre-1900 certainly) bookbinders were in fact
national treasures who produced works that were considered high art (see
Frank Comparato, _Books for the Millions_ or any of Mirjam Foot's copious
studies for a good discussion of that.) These guys and, quite surprisingly,
gals, made their own tools, tanned the leather they used, "foiled" the gold
that they used to emboss books, and the designs on the cover were as
treasured by the wealthy as a fine painting. Nowadays, books are made by
essentially pressing a button. in goes paper, out comes book. Presto.

While many "artisanal" occupations have undergone that change, bookbinding
comes the closest to approximating the imagined (DaVinci) change above. Real
art becomes mass produced.

Along side that whole change... the bookbinders have the peculiar habit of
not giving up their craft identity. Even up until the mid 1970s, when the
International Brotherhood of Bookbinders (publishers of the journal in
question) gets sucked into the teamsters, they still use an archaic system
of job titles, refusing to let go of a shared pre-industrial occupational
culture. They hold on to this image of bookbinder-as-artist -- partially
because there are still tiny craft bideries operating all over the world,
and partially because of large amount of pride in being connected to the
artistic history of "the book."

They also take the somewhat odd and quite remarkable tack of welcoming their
own anachronizing. They encourage the mechanization of the bindery because
they are (note lower case "r") republicans devoted to this odd, whiggish
notion of "progress." This is *not* common in labor history. Possibly
unique, at least in the 20th century. Many unions had cordial relations with
their industry (think railroads pre-1900 or so and iron workers
pre-Taylorization and pre-US Steel, etc.,) but BOMK, none actually
encouraged their own destruction.

Anyway...all of that is documented pretty damned well in _International
Bookbinder._

My wife *loves* to describe what I do to her co-workers. I told her to just
say I study labor history. Easy and mostly accurate.

I know....I'm a thrill at parties.

Dan