Fore Edge Friday
Look at these paste-paper edges!! We see a lot of gilded and marbled edges, but not that many using a paste-paper technique. Paste papers are one of the earliest methods used to decorate paper. From the late 16th century through to the 19th century paste papers were predominately used as book covers and endsheets, but you will occasionally see book edges decorated in this manner. Today, as in centuries past, we continue to find paste papers used in book covers. Unlike gilding and marbling, the paste-paper process requires little equipment or advanced skill. It is essentially just paste mixed with pigment brushed onto a paper surface, with the creation of designs of almost a 3-dimensional quality using various tools, combs, or stamps. To make paste-paper edges, the text block would need to be clamped very tightly and brushed with a thin layer of paste before patterning to avoid pasting the pages closed.
These particular edges come from our copy of William Hayley’s An Essay on Sculpture: In a Series of Epistles to John Flaxman, printed by Andrew Strahan for Cadell and Davies in 1800. The cameo portrait shown here, engraved by Hayley’s friend and collaborator William Blake, is of Hayley’s beloved son, Thomas who had been a disciple of John Flaxman, and had died in the same year as this publication. The etching is paired with the final lines of Epistle 6, that read: “Forgive paternal pain, that wildly flings / An agitated hand across the strings, / A shade of sorrow o’er his triumph throws, / And sighing, bids th’ imperfect paean close.”
View our other Fore Edge Friday posts.