French binding is one of the most durable, beautiful and unique versions of book bindings. The roots of this art go back to the depths of history. It can take several years to fully master this technique.
French binding
One of the main features of the French flight is its unique strength. To create a book block, they take high-quality and expensive paper, decorate it with illustrations. Sewing blocks is carried out by hand, it is a very complex and difficult process, but as a result the quality of the sewn blocks is prohibitive. Notebooks or individual sheets never fall out of such paper blocks, as happens with books made in the traditional way.
Usually books made in this technique are richly embossed. Such books adorn the best libraries in the world. The shelf with books made using the French binding technique looks very impressive and beautiful.
After manual sewing and assembly, each block is given the correct shape. The thickness of the block itself is reduced in the area of the spine, the edges are folded back, a special oblique glue is applied, this makes the spine much more durable. After that, the spine of the book block is brought to mind so that it turns out to be absolutely symmetrical along the central axis of the book. Moreover, the block has a special shape that compensates for the thickness of the cover. This makes the books look smooth, beautiful and durable.
Cover design using the French binding technique
After the block has been processed, it's time to work on the book cover. In the technique of French binding, two technologies of leather covering are used - semi-leather binding and all-leather binding. In the first case, only the corners and the spine of the book are covered with leather, in the second - the whole book. Usually, for the cover of a book, high-quality and expensive leather such as Shagreni or Morochen is used, the color of such leather is usually dark brown, dark red or deep blue.
Shagreen leather is called rough tanned leather (donkey or horse) with a distinct natural pattern. Moroquin is an embossed moroccan that has a strong and beautiful structure. In the case of a semi-leather binding, the space between the corners and the spine is covered with decorative marble paper.
From the usual binding, French technically differs by a rounded spine, dense gluing of the entire book block. There is no usual void in the area of the French spine.
This decorative paper is carefully selected to match the leading skin tone, sometimes adorned with special embossing. The book is fitted with a special leather spine, which is glued to the spine of the paper block. After that, both sides of the book cover are fitted.
