MORE ON FORE-EDGE PAINTING

While you don’t see them very often these days, fore-edge paintings were once some of the loveliest book illustrations around. Literally, they were around the edges of the book.

A fore-edge painting refers to an image painted or drawn on the closed leaves of a book. While covering the collected page edges in gold or silver leaf was a popular choice, sometimes artists went one step further and painted whole scenes and landscapes on them. This form of fore-edge decoration is known as “all-edge” painting, and it was only the beginning.

Some ambitious, “disappearing” fore-edge paintings were painted on the inside edges of the pages, so that the hidden scenes could only be seen when the page block was fanned in a certain direction. If the book was simply closed, the page edges could look normal and unadorned (or possibly gilded), only revealing the image when one of the covers were shifted back, slanting the pages.

These secret illustrations could be doubled, with an illustration on either side of the pages, revealing themselves depending on the slant of the page block (known as the “two-way double”). Some were painted so that if the book was laid open in the center, naturally splaying the pages to either side, two different illustrations could be seen on either side (known as a “split double”).

There are even examples of rarer variations that required the pages to be pinched or tented in a certain way to see the image. The only limit was the artists’ imaginations.

To read the complete article, see:
Lovely Hidden Paintings Adorned the Edges of Historic Books (www.atlasobscura.com/articles/lovely-hidden-paintings-adorned-the-edges-of-historic-books)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
FORE-EDGE PAINTING (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n39a31.html)

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