What is Book Cover Eco Art? Many leather bound early books had titles and author names that were stamped or embossed in gilt on their rich leather covers and bindings.

Book covers are works of art.  Over the years, some books disintegrate, mildew or become damaged.  Leather and cloth covers often outlive the brittle interior pages.  Restoring, preserving and framing the book covers are ways to share this art form with future generations.

What is Book Cover Art?
During the Victorian Age, as everything became elaborately decorated, book covers were no exception. Books became more affordable and competition among book publishers grew.

Botanical illustrators and painters were hired to design spectacular book covers to encourage people to purchase books. In the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s, book cover art flourished. As Victorian Age fashion was replaced by less ornate design styles, book cover art died out except for a few art book publishers.  Books reverted to plainer cloth covers with paper book jackets becoming the marketing tool.

There are several main categories of artistic book covers. The first is the beautiful gilt designed cover.  Many of the cover designers worked their initials into designs or signed the covers with their initials. Sometime several other colors were stamped into the design. Flowers, animals, curlicues and intricate border designs were featured in these ornate works of art. Margaret Armstrong, Sarah Wymann, and Alice Cordelia Morse are the best known of these designers. Often the same design was used on many books or books in series with only the title and author changing.

The second type of design cover is the cover with a paste up also called a paste on.  These covers had a paper drawing or illustration made of paper, usually in full color, and pasted onto the book cover.  This type of cover is difficult to find in good condition because the paper often wasn’t glued on uniformly or with lasting glue and the paper ripped, came off or was damaged. Particularly popular subjects for paste up covers were those showing a landscape, a portrait of a woman or an illustration for a mystery. Howard Chandler Christy’s paintings of women were the inspiration for many paste up book covers.

The third type of artistic book design cover is a line drawing book cover.  These detailed drawings often were found on folio and larger size books.  Many depicted entire scenes from the book in black ink. Sometimes the line drawings had some gilt highlights.

The fourth type of book cover art was on a high quality and colour leather or cloth binding with the title and the author name presented ornately on the cover without any other decoration.  The Victorian period was a time many illustrators designed their own individual style of alphabets and sold them to publishers.