Historical December 1990 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Bookbinder and philosopher Jerome Schiller was born in New York City across from the old Madison Square Garden.
He received his bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College, and his master’s degree and Ph.D. from Harvard.
He has been on the faculty of Washington University since 1964 and was chairman of the philosophy department from 1980 until 1986.
His specialty is Greek philosophy, in particular Aristotle and Plato.
In 1962, Schiller began to develop his bookbinding knowledge while teaching at Knox College.
When he learned that his great, great grandfather, who had immigrated from Poland in 1840, had also done hand bookbinding, he was impressed with the coincidence.
In 1976 he went to Ascona, Switzerland to Centro Del Bel Libro and studied the use of gold in bookbinding for a month and then spent half time for a year in the London College of Printing, working with Arthur Johnson who was an excellent teacher but a difficult personality. Johnson’s book, Manual of Bookbinding, is an important reference that is carried by the St. Louis Public Library. From 1988 until the present, Schiller has been teaching bookbinding at Craft Alliance.
He works in the traditional way—heating his tools on a small hot plate and using an electrically heated glue pot, animal glue and wheat paste. At Craft Alliance he teaches both beginners and advanced students.
He explained that designs are made on the back of the book, the spine and, perhaps, on the front.
If both covers of a book are held open, designs can continue or flow from back to spine to front. Leather is used extensively in binding books, especially Moroccan leather which is very responsive to tooling with gold. Other materials include cloth and marbled paper. Gilding the edges of the book is a very specialized skill which Schiller employs.
He accepts commissions and repairs and is currently working on three commissions.
The Schiller family lives on 61XX McPherson and includes his wife Britt Marie and their son Alexander. About two years ago Dr. Schiller became a regular at the Kiosk looking for books for young Alexander.
They would sit on the floor together, he reading and explaining the books to gleeful Alexander.
They always left with a large armful of books and returned to check out more. Alexander took part in all the children’s events at the Kiosk along with his father.
We are happy to have the Schillers as patrons and we wish them the best for the future. Two of the many books on bookbinding at the St. Louis Public Library are: The History of Bookbinding, 525-1950 a.d.; an exhibition held at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Walters Art Gallery, Nov. 12, 1957. Zaehnsdorf Firm, Bookbinders, London, 1895 A Short History of Bookbinding and a Glossary of Styles and Terms used in Binding with a brief account of the celebrated binders and patrons of bookbinding from whom the various styles are named.
Original photograph caption
Dr. Jerome Schiller. Photo by King Schoenfeld.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, December 1990.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1990_12.pdf, printed page(s) 7; PDF page(s) 7.
