#gauffered edges

[thebeautifulbook]

PSALMISTA MONASTICUM (Venice: Lucantonio Giunta, 1573)

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[muspeccoll]

Wordy Wednesday

Gauffered edges: A form of tooling that is applied not to the cover but to the edges of the text block. It is typically done after the pages have been gilt and involves applying a heated metal tool to the edge of the paper. It had its heyday in the 1500s, especially in Germany, and eventually fell out of favor in 1650, but was later revived in the late 1700s and in the 1800s.

(via Facsimile — Gloss · Rare Books: A Glossary · Special Collections and Archives)

[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP Winnie-the-Pooh

Part III Decorating the edges

For colouring the edges I had a special design in mind that would take a few more steps the the usual single colour edge. After all the sanding that needs to be done to apply the colour evenly I had a honey comb pattern traced and transfered by tracing it again (graphite side up! because with light colours, like the one I settled for, smudges will show).

After a first light tracing I took the paper away and traced it again until the edge was properly gauffered. 

Then I mixed up my colour palette. I first thought to get a darker brown by mixing lemon yellow and black...  which turned a nasty green so I added some dark red. and got this brown.

I probably should have gone for a lighter hue, but by then I had the fore edge done and I was not up to sand it smooth again so I could gauffer a second time.

Once dried (I used a hairdryer to speed the drying up) I sanded the edge lightly so the surface was lighter again without completely cleaning out the indentions. You can clearly see the area where I backed the book. Now it takes more colour too because there’s no pressure applied there so the edge wasn’t quite as smooth as the pressed area and the colour can settle deeper in the paper due to that too. 

Then came the second layer of colour with a gold-yellow mix. I let it dry again, waxed the edge with beeswax and polished it with a wad of cotton.  The soft shimmer does not show well on the pictures but aside from the protection it offers I like the warm look it gives the edge.

As you can see I settled for a three sided colouring.

The front edge was the worst to work on the looks the messiest. I was sloppy about the sanding there, but I’m still happy enough with it. Considering I didn’t even do a test run to check if this gauffering-colouring-sanding-colouring combo would work at all.

Also here is what the spine area looks like just backed and sanded. The triangle (mine is not even so I, and now you too, can see I didn’t back very evenly) is completely normal for backed books. Part of it will be covered up by endbands later on.

[librarycompany]

We have to stop and admire every gauffered fore edge we spot in the stacks, it's practically a job requirement.

This one is from a Bible published by J.B. Lippincott & Company in 1864.

Happy #ForeEdgeFriday!

[thebeautifulbook]

MAHZOR. (Tuscany, c1490) A Jewish holiday prayerbook. Gold highlights, initial word panels throughout in burnished gold on red, green or blue grounds, some embellished with marginal sprays, text illustrations Edges gilt and gauffered

Mid 16th-century Italian gold-tooled dark brown goatskin over thin wooden boards with strapwork painted in red and yellow, both covers with central cartouche with coat of arms, elaborately decorated with a unicorn and rabbit, hatched leaf and flower tools, solid dots and foliate rolls.

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[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP Midgard - Wolfgang & Heike Hohlbein

gilding and colouring edges gone wrong, that’s what you get from being lazy (pictures and description under the cut)

So I was learning how to gild edges with genuine leaf gold and picked the probably worst paper to work with. There were a lot of things going wrong to begin with. We sanded the edges from hand, but also with a belt sander, which actually a brilliant idea...  if you are familiar using one, which was not. So from sanding hollows and angles into the edge to polishing the gold too soon/ too late/ too lightly/ too firmly, I’m pretty sure I picked up every mistake and problem I could run into.  This blotchy and speckled looking edge was the best result I got in a row of much worse results, so I kept it. 

There was also some smudging on the fore edge from gilding the head edge that still needed cleaning up (meaning sanding... I hate sanding the fore-edge because you have to do it by hand. There’s supposed to be a way using a  cutting machine, but I don’t really know how to do that)

On a whim I decided, why not colouring the other edges to make it look a bit more exciting? As I mentioned I’m lazy with sanding the edge, knowing the voluminous paper I had here I didn’t put as much effort and time in as I should have and this was the result

You can clearly see where I didn’t sand the edge smooth enough at the sides. The darker one here was the side I had on my side of the press so it was not as easy to apply pressure there. Not that one should apply more pressure in one direction than the other in the first place, but well... (This is a picture from when I pressed the book in a second time for polishing (which one shouldn’t do either, but it was already fucked up anyway), not from the actual sanding and colouring process, hence the lack of paper to protect the press!)  Because it looked already uneven and sort of grunge I tried a wavy brush pattern which turns out to offer a nice moiré effect that I had not anticipated.

I ended up sanding the bottom edge even less and  got ‘a not as smooth as I like but nicely coloured’ edge that has a nice sheen and touch after waxing  and polishing it.

Tooling the gilded edge was surprisingly easy. I just printed a pattern I liked to fit the edge, placed it and traced the lines. The pattern wasn’t wide enough to cover all the messy parts of the edge and didn’t feel confident to add to the patter in a fitting pattern free hand so I just sort of blended in with some dots. The cover-up had worked partially, I guess  more uneven/ haphazard pattern might have been better than straight lines, but in general I’m pleased of how it turned out. The paper was shining off rather stark white and I toned it down a bit by smearing graphit from a pencil rub off on it.

[uispeccoll]

For those who appreciate a book with gauffered edges, here is our 1564 copy of Imitatio Christi. As seen in the images, the edges of this book are incredibly detailed, and the front and back covers also have some beautiful designs. This book is also surprisingly tiny - it only measures 13 cm tall! 

This book might look familiar to frequent followers to our page...it is the same book in our avatar in our header!

xBV4820 A1 1564

-Lindsay M.

[uispeccoll]

Published in 1854, this copy of The Illustrated Book of Scottish Songs is perfect for any book collector interested in fine book design. The gauffered edges (the gold detailing on the fore-edge) really adds to the beautiful green leather binding. The zoomed-in images also give you a sense of how delicate this process must have been to create this effect. 

Inside the lovely exterior are folk songs, ballads, and other types of Scottish music from the sixteenth to nineteenth century. This book only contains illustrations and lyrics, however it does include references to where to find the tunes for some of the songs. 

xPR8651 I29 1854

-Lindsay M.