sewing stations (Q530)

Sewing stations are created by passing a thread through a spine fold when sewing a book. Each sewing support will therefore correspond to a sewing station. Sewing stations include change-over stations or chain-stitch stations in an unsupported structure. Some broad sewing supports have a sewing hole on each side of them and these should count as a single sewing station with two holes (two-hole sewing station). Very occasionally, three-hole stations may be encountered. In a structure with sewing supports there will usually be a change-over station above and below the supported area of the spine, thus adding two extra stations to the number of sewing supports. If there are no separate change-over stations, the number of sewing stations will be the same as the number of sewing supports. In some German bindings with Kapitalbünde, the binders worked chainstitches across the spine between the Kapitalbünde and the closest sewing supports, thus creating two additional stations. In some English bindings of the second half of the seventeenth century with bookblocks sewn on recessed sewing supports, additional recesses were cut across the spine between the sewing supports and sometimes also at head and tail close to the change-over stations to allow the spine adhesive to penetrate to the inner bifolia of the gatherings in order to reinforce multi-section sewing and the often rather weak structures found on such books. The term sewing station has been used by some writers to include only