Folded books are more convenient to read or consult than scrolls, but the folded parts are easy to break, and the whole book becomes loose-leaf after breaking, which is easy to mess up. So some people think, since scrolls and folding books are originally connected by sheets, why can't they be directly bound by sheets? From about the Five Dynasties, people began to use loose-leaf binding, first butterfly binding, then bag binding, and finally thread binding. The loose-leaf binding of books after the appearance of butterfly suit has completely changed the style of examination papers that have lasted for more than 1000 years, which is another revolution of China's book system. Its method has been continuously improved and innovated, and it has been used to this day.
(1) loose-leaf terms:
After the book was bound with loose pages, the style of lettering board also changed, not only from the original strip to rectangle, but also a set of corresponding formats and some special terms appeared.
Loose-leaf bound books are printed on one side. The space occupied by a printing plate on a piece of paper is called "layout", and the blanks outside the layout are called "top", "foot" and "edge".
The four sides of the layout are spliced into a "frame" with lines, and the lines spliced into a frame are called "sidebar". Aperture line is also called "edge" and "aperture" (also written as "column"). The side aperture above the frame is called "upper aperture", the lower aperture is called "lower aperture" and the left and right apertures are called "left and right apertures". There are single-sided holes and double-sided holes. There is only one line called "unilateral" or "single aperture", which is generally thick; Adding a thin line inside the thick line constitutes a "bilateral", also called "double aperture". For ancient books printed by block printing, there are three forms of picture frames: unilateral, bilateral and bilateral. Generally, there is no upper and lower bilateral, only unilateral.
Within a frame, a straight line is divided into lines, which is called "boundary line" or "boundary grid". The middle line is called "center" or "middle seam". The text is not engraved, and the title, article title, volume number, page number, words on this page, engraver's name, etc. are always printed. Books bound by butterflies often have fishtail-like patterns in the center of the edition, and the intersection of fishtails is the center of the appropriate page, which can be used as the benchmark for folding pages. The fish tail is all black, which is called "black fish tail"; The white fishtail is called "white fishtail". Adding various patterns to the white fishtail is the "flower fishtail". Sometimes only one fish tail is carved in the heart of the edition, which is called "single fish tail", and one fish tail is carved up and down, which is called "double fish tail". The upper one is called "upper fishtail" and the lower one is called "lower fishtail". There are also versions that don't engrave fish tails in their hearts, only two horizontal lines are up and down, and some don't even use horizontal lines.
When using a book wrapped in north or thread, fold a loose leaf in half along the middle seam, so that the backs of two and a half pages are the same, revealing the side with words. At this time, the folded middle seam is on the side of the book opening and closing, so it is also called "book opening". In order to fold neatly, sometimes a black straight line, which is the center line, is printed on the top of the upper fish tail and below the lower fish tail. From the opening of the book, the center of each page is black, which is called "Darkmouth". The one without printed center line is called "white mouth". The thick black line is called "Big Darkmouth" or "Thick Darkmouth", and the narrow black line is called "Little Black Mouth" or "Fine Darkmouth". It says "Upper Darkmouth" and it says "Lower Darkmouth". Fishtail and Darkmouth together look a bit like elephants, so they are also called "trunk".
Books in the period of Butterfly Clothes sometimes have a small long square carved above the left column, in which the title or title is inscribed, which is called "book ear". Because each page of the butterfly book has characters folded along the middle seam and the back is blank, when binding, the center of each page is on the back of the book, the left and right hole lines are on the opening and closing edges of the book, and there are book ears outside the left hole for easy reference. When we arrived at Baobeizhuang and Hemp Bag, the heart of the edition turned to the edge of the book, and titles and articles were often engraved, and book ears were rarely used.
Some books are engraved with "cards" at the back of the table of contents or in the margin at the end of the volume, which are also called "books" or "volumes". The content is generally to explain who carved the book, the time and place of engraving the book, the version according to it and so on. Card records have a variety of shapes, usually a long box, while square lettering card records are often fancy, and some will add a few advertising words to attract customers.
(2) Butterfly clothing
Butterfly costume began in the late Tang Dynasty and prevailed in the Northern Song Dynasty. As mentioned above, the binding method of butterfly binding is to fold two pages with words in the middle of each page in half, with the blank on the back facing outwards, and then wrap a stack of loose leaves folded in this way from front to back with a piece of paper, and stick the creases of each page firmly on this paper to avoid falling off, thus becoming a butterfly-bound book.
Butterfly-bound books inherit the advantages of convenient reading of folded books, and are not easy to be broken and scattered after binding, and soon become the main form of books. It gets its name because the book is symmetrical when it is opened, just like a butterfly spreading its wings. The province calls it "butterfly suit". The paper used by butterflies to wrap the front and back of books to form the front and back covers is called "book cover" (now called "book cover"). Book covers are often made of soft paper, plus a layer of hard paper, and sometimes silk brocade watches are used, much like hardcover books now. Sometimes a long and narrow label called "Bookmark" is attached to the left side of the cover of a book, with the title, volume number and sometimes volume number added. The upper end of a book is called the head, the lower end is called the root, the right side is called the back or spine, and the left side is called the mouth.
(3) Baobeizhuang
Butterfly installation has a disadvantage, that is, because the printed surface of each page is folded inward and the blank back is outward, when you open a book, you often encounter the blank back. Moreover, it is inconvenient to turn over two pages in a row after reading one page. So someone folded the back of the page of a book in half with the back of the book, and the side with the words on it was exposed (the same as the pages of the later thread-bound book), and then wrapped a stack of folded loose leaves from front to back with the book cover, which became a "Bao Beizhuang", also called a "backpack". Bao Beizhuang's book heart moved to the side of the book mouth, and the two margins outside the page layout were attached to the back of the book, so that there would be no blanks when reading, and you could read page by page without interruption.
Baobeizhuang began at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, went through the Yuan Dynasty and remained in use until the middle of the Ming Dynasty. Bao Beizhuang's book, the mouth of the book is the heart of the page. After the title, title, volume number and page number are engraved, it acts like the ear of a butterfly book and is easy to refer to. However, if the butterfly skirt method is still used, the book mouth will be pressed on the bookshelf, which will inevitably lead to the page breaking in half at the middle seam after frequent wear. In this way, not only the title and title of the page are unrecognizable, but also it will be as blank as a butterfly suit when browsing and reading. So people use the method of flattening bookshelves to flatten many books. Since it is flat, there is no need to use hard materials for the book coat, so there is a soft book coat. The title and title at the root of the book were changed from straight up and down to horizontal writing, just like later thread-bound books.
Bao Beizhuang's book, if you want to stick both sides of each page firmly on the back of the book, it is more troublesome than butterfly dressing. On the other hand, there is always a wider surplus paper outside the frame, so someone uses a new method to make small holes in the surplus paper, usually two or three holes, and then screw the paper into the small holes to fix a book. One side of this kind of punched book binding is called "book brain", and the outside is wrapped with a whole book coat, and the appearance is still the same as that of Bao Beizhuang. This kind of improved packaging has opened the way for later assembly.
(4) straight line fitting
Line drawing originated in the late Tang Dynasty and prevailed in the middle of Ming Dynasty. It is developed on the basis of the improved Baobei Village. The bag is easily damaged at the back of the book. At this time, only two or three sheets of paper are twisted, and the head of the book is uneven, and the upper and lower corners of the head are easy to roll up, which affects the appearance and reading. So someone made an improvement: after the paper is twisted and punched, it is bound with thread holes. This is the "thread-bound book". Thread-bound books should not be packed with a whole book coat like butterfly skirts and northern clothes. Instead, two and a half pages of soft paper are used to separate the front and back of the book as the front cover and back cover, and they are bound together with the book.
The upper and lower corners of thread-bound books are easy to wear, so some valuable books wrap the corners with brocade and the like, which is called "wrapping the corners". Sometimes old books are repaired or reloaded. Draw a line on each page of the book with a piece of white paper. This kind of paper is called "backing paper". The backing paper is often larger than the original book paper, so the original book paper is generally yellow and old, and the background is white and yellow and white, which is called "gold inlaid jade", also called "robe" or "cherish the ancient lining"
Since thread-bound books are all soft books, in order to protect books and facilitate their collection on shelves, bibliophiles since the Ming and Qing Dynasties have often made book covers for thread-bound books, also known as "book slips". Generally, envelopes are lined with hard paper, with blue cloth outside and white paper inside. The four sides of the book are wrapped, leaving only the head and root of the book, and then two toothpicks are inserted tightly. Others wrap the head and root of the book, and the tree is "four in one". Because the book cover is made of paste, it is easy to be eaten by mice and insects, and it is easy to break after a long time. Therefore, some people like to use a "splint", that is, use two boards the size of a book, and put a belt at each end to clamp the book tightly. Now libraries and private collections of ancient books often use boxes.
As mentioned earlier, the ancient books in China experienced a long historical process and different stages of development from bamboo slips to album pages. Different book systems always adapt to the degree of human civilization in that period. The development of the book system, like all aspects of human civilization, keeps advancing along the road from low to high and from coarse to fine, which embodies the painstaking efforts and wisdom of the people of China in past dynasties. Because the book system reflects and determines the external form of books, it can be said that no matter what kind of book form, it has played a decisive role in recording and communicating human thoughts and feelings, preserving and disseminating various cultural knowledge in history, thus making an inestimable contribution to the formation of Chinese civilization for thousands of years.