To assist with the quick location of family groups throughout the book, the
fore-edge of the book is colour coded.
Its cover feels strangely and even eerily cool to the touch, and eases open toward the
fore-edge as if tugged open by an unseen hand, but it is actually time's tautening of the skin, which is characteristic of vellum bindings.
The above-mentioned plate is an etching, taken from Johann Comenius's Orbis sensualium pictus (London, 1685), which shows in great detail the quasi-geometrical layout of a seventeenth-century bookshop, with books being kept in horizontal stacks of unbound sheets, for readers to bind themselves in their preferred configuration, and with only about a third of the stock kept in ready-bound form, sitting vertically on the shelf,
fore-edge out.
Taking place at the Fort Mason Center in the beautiful Marina district, over 40 international participants present a range of trompe l'oeil and transformable exhibits, including metamorphic furniture and
fore-edge painting.
Particularly intriguing are
fore-edge paintings, scenes or figures painted on the
fore-edge of a book but visible only when the pages of the book are slightly bent or fanned so as to reveal the illustration.
"He was a 19th century architect and writer, and the books had been decorated with a
fore-edge painting, which is a painting you can only see when you fan the pages in a certain way, at the time of its publication.
However, she describes with clarity the various methods, both luxurious and economical, for constructing a decorated binding for a large book: the methods of sewing signatures, of gluing, constructing bands and false bands, spines, tailpieces,
fore-edge paintings, book presses--all the marvelous paraphernalia of the craft.