Visited the bindery at Colonial Williamsburg and noticed they still sew on raised cords by hand

I went to Colonial Williamsburg last Saturday and watched their bookbinder work on a reproduction. He was using linen thread on raised cords, no glue pot in sight the whole time I watched. But in my own shop I use glued spines and hollow tubes because it's faster and holds up better with modern use. So which method actually makes a stronger book in the long run, traditional hand sewing or modern glued backs? Has anyone here done a side by side test on the durability?

2 comments

2 Comments

johnh8221d agoTop Commenter

Manually sewn books from that era didn't survive this long because they were weak, right? That's the whole point of the raised cords is they take the stress off the spine instead of dumping it all on a glue joint that can crack and fail after twenty years. Modern glued spines are fine for paperbacks no one will read in 2075, but for anything you want to last more than a lifetime the old way wins every time. Why would we trust modern shortcuts when the old books prove themselves every day on library shelves?

hayes.tara21d ago

But isnt that kind of the point though? Like yeah the old books are strong, but they were also way more expensive to make and took real skill. Not everyone could just learn to sew a book properly, you had to have someone who knew what they were doing. So when you say modern shortcuts are bad, arent you really saying we should pay more for books? Like a lot more? Because that's the tradeoff right, you get something that lasts but you also pay for the labor and materials.