On Books that are Too Wide…

In his short essay On Books that are Too Wide, Too Large, or Square, typographer Jan Tschichold (1902-1974) justly characterises volumes wider than the depth of the average shelf (which he reckons at about 24cm, or 9½ in) as ‘irksome’.

On the whole one should not make books unduly large. One seldom encounters the reverse case: books that are too small.

Dr. Frank Zöllner’s monograph on the paintings and drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, recently published by Taschen, is a beautiful, but an unwieldy book. It is not only too wide to fit on our shelves without protruding awkwardly, but is in any case too tall for them too. This is a tome of a height and a heft that could most comfortably be read at a lectern. As it is, the book stands on the floor, against a bookshelf, from where it must be manhandled with no little effort onto its reader’s lap.

Such inconveniences can readily be forgiven, however, as one loses oneself in the numerous sequences of full-page details lovingly reproduced from da Vinci’s major works. Even Tschichold acknowledges that exceptions may be made for outsize books with ‘large and valuable plates’, although he goes on to remark that:

…most of our books are much too heavy. Often the reason is art paper. Thick tomes of art paper should therefore be divided into two volumes.

This is certainly an opus where such a division would have been a worthwhile ergonomic concession to the reader. Tschichold, in the essays collected under the title The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design is a fascinating source on all aspects of book and type design, most especially with regard to the ideal proportion, size and layout of the printed page.

About six weeks ago I posted some woodcuts culled from a 16th-Century alchemical work by one Giovanni Battista Nazari. I’d found the pictures at Adam McLean’s Alchemy web-site. McLean, I noticed soon afterwards, also operates a publishing venture, through which he prints, binds and sells a whole series of obscure alchemical works. One of the recentest of these publications was, I noticed, Nazari’s Three Dreams on the Transmutation of Metals.

Intrigued by McLean’s blurb, and in admiration of his endeavours as a one-man publisher-printer-bookbinder, I ordered a copy of Three Dreams…. On reading the book, alas, it struck me that the reason this work had languished, largely unread, for centuries, was because it just wasn’t particularly well-written, and could thus be of little interest except to the specialist, or the would-be adept of the Spagyric Art.

More disappointing than that, however, was the physical form of the book, which would have surely made Tschichold shudder: its fake-leather binding hit a wrong note, as did the bleached-white photocopier-paper on which it appeared to have been printed. Besides that, the A5 format in which this volume was made is one that is, in Tschichold’s words ‘unpleasant when hand-held’, ‘too wide, too unwieldy, and inelegant.’ In short, for all its publisher’s good efforts, and admirable intent, this was an ugly book, one that could easily have been a desirable object (setting aside its literary shortcomings), had it been printed in a handier format, on écru-toned paper, and bound in cloth.