More random old book facts:
Over time, books might become damaged and lose pages—many early modern readers would simply replace the missing pages with manuscript. Below, the left side of the page is printed, the right side is manuscript.
Pages with big empty space on them were difficult to print, since the printing platen could descend on the type unevenly. To prevent this from happening, printers sometimes used random blocks of type to bulk out the page, leaving those blocks uninked. This is called bearer type—it could still leave a blind impression on the page, as below.
Books are printed (even to this day) on large sheets of paper and then folded to create gatherings which are then put together to form a book. We classify books based on how many pages were printed on each sheet (folio, quarto, octavo, duodecimal, et c). Printers used set schemes, called imposition schemes, to keep track of how to arrange the pages so they would appear in the correct order when folded. Below is an imposition scheme for a book printed with 48 pages per sheet. Bibliographers would classify this (no kidding) as a forty-eightmo.
To make a book binding, paper or parchment scraps are needed to stiffen the spine and give it strength. Book binders often used waste paper or parchment, including older books that were considered obsolete, for this purpose. Many medieval manuscripts were cut up and reused as part of early modern bindings. In the below book, a fifteenth century binding uses a musical manuscript for spine lining. Scholars have made many discoveries of lost manuscripts by examining the bindings of later books.
Paper made in the West between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries was created one sheet at a time using a rectangular wooden paper mold with a screen created by intersecting chains and wires. The chains and wires left impressions on the finished paper, visible through transmitted light. Paper makers began to intentionally leave impressions by creating designs out of wires on the mold. In the image below you can see widely spaced chain lines running vertically, closely spaced wire lines running horizontally, and a watermark of a unicorn inside a flower.
Parchment or vellum is made of animal skin. Even after preparing it for writing on, it still has a visible flesh side, the side that was inside the animal, and hair side, the side that was outside where hair grew. Parchment books are quired, or gathered together, so that there is a repeating pattern of fleshside and hairside, as seen in the image below.
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
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