Excerpt from Bib-Li-Op-E-Gis-Tic: To Which Is Appended a Glossary of Some Terms Used in the Craft The craft of the bookbinder is older than that of the printer. Quoting from Mr. Brander Matthews: Perhaps the first bookbinder was the humble workman who collected the baked clay tiles on which the Assyrians wrote their laws; and he was a bookbinder also who prepared a protecting cylinder to guard the scrolls of papyrus on which Vergil, and Horace, and Martial had written their verses. Modern art in bookbinding began in Italy in the fifteenth century. The invention of printing had so multiplied hooks that the work got out of the hands of the monks, and workmen from other trades were pressed into service, bringing with them their skill in working leather, as well as their tools, and designs which they had previously used to decorate their work. At this time the libraries were shelves, so inclined, as to allow of the books lying on their sides, inviting their decoration. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art techlogy to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.