spine-panel tools

Tools engraved with all the decoration required for a spine panel, usually a centre and four corner designs. These were used in France and apparently also in England (Foot, Bookbinders at Work, pp. 95-6) in the eighteenth century to speed up the process of tooling standard inboard bindings in full leather, but as they were of fixed dimensions, they do not always fit the panels very well, being either to wide or too narrow or too short for the panel. They can be identified by unusually wide borders above and below them when too short or leaving a wide border on each side when too narrow, or running over the edge of the spine when too wide, or when some impressions are tooled off-centre, with all the elements of the design shifted together to left or right. Comparing rubbings of the different impressions on the same spine, either over a light box or digitally, can confirm whether the same single tool was used to make all of them.