Handwork and Handicrafts - Waldorf Research Institute

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CHAPTER IX
Bookbinding and Folders
Steiner led his students with unparalleled patience. He did this with love, but also
with severity. He was a sharp critic and was quite able to express his displeasure when he saw
that his advice had been followed either incompletely or not at all—or when the essential
point of his sketches had not been grasped but had merely been imitated. On a visit to the
Stuttgart Waldorf School in 1924, he was very annoyed to see two folders (Plate 1, figs. 8 and
9) on which the decorative design led across from left to right not only at the top but at the
bottom too. He pointed to it and reprimanded:
What are these curves doing down here? One cannot open these folders
because the decoration requires one to leave them shut. It is just bearable on
this one (fig. 9), where the colors are faint, but on the embroidered one
(fig. 8), the curve below is quite impossible.
When the reply was given that they had tried to follow the indications given in his sketches,
he answered angrily: “Have you ever seen anything like that in my sketches? If a copy is
wanted, it should at least be done accurately and well” (Plate 1, figs. 10, 11 and 12; Plates 5,
6 and 7).
Steiner had spoken in several places about the designing of book covers some years
before 1924. In the “Lectures to Teachers,” Dornach, Christmas 1921, he said the following,
which is taken from the notes of Albert Steffen:
Cushions whose embroidery is felt against the face when one puts one’s head
on them, handbags giving no indication of which is the front and which is
the back, books bound in such a way that the cover does not tell one that it is
supposed to be opened, all these are sins in the world of appearance, which is
the domain of art.
The following remark appears in shorthand notes of the same lecture: “Nowadays one seldom
sees a book designed in such a way that one can see that the leaves are meant to be cut. Books
usually bear some design which actually requires one to leave them shut, not to open them at
all.”
Decorations on the covers of books and folders should show quite clearly which is
the top and the bottom, the front and back. Regarding the format of books and folders,
Steiner said that an upright oblong should be used for anything written or printed, whilst a
lengthwise oblong should be used for drawings or pictures. He said that the insides of folders,
and of other things too, should always be lighter than the outsides. In Dornach he further