Fore-edge painting

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Fore-edge painting: a hidden book cut decoration

Fore-edge painting (sometimes abbreviated fore-edge , German: undercut painting ) describes a hidden book cut decoration that is attached to the edges of book pages and is invisible when leafing through as well as when the book is closed. The painting only shows itself when you press the pages of the book together and move them slightly against each other. Then an image on the displayed Buchschnitt (Engl. Fore-edges ).

Procedure

When creating the pattern of a book, the bound book block is pressed into a bevel and the cut is shifted by a maximum of 1 millimeter per sheet. The displaced cut is painted, usually with non-flowing watercolors . Then, as soon as the painting has dried, the book block is brought back into shape and the cut is gilded or decorated with a marbling so that the painting remains completely hidden when the book is closed. The millimeter-fine colored edge of a single sheet cannot be seen when it is opened; the picture is only formed in the entirety of all the sheet edges of the book when the block is pressed into a slight slope.

to form

In addition to simple fore-edge painting, in which a painting appears in the front cut when the book block is pressed diagonally, there is the variant in which another image emerges when the book block is fanned out in the opposite direction (double-fore-edge) ; hidden images at the head or undercut are rare. Occasionally there is also another image instead of the gilding or marbling of the cut. A combination of fore-edge painting on both the front and head or undercut requires twisting of the book block when the sheets are shifted.

history

Visible painting of the book cut with symbolic or heraldic representations is documented as early as the Middle Ages. At the time of the early printing , the books were stored horizontally and with the front cut to the front, which is why it was not uncommon for the title to be painted on. The oldest known printing unit in which a Buchschnitt painting disappears when the book is closed, dates from 1649. In the year 1653 brought the brothers and bookbinder Stephen and Thomas Lewis in London a latent image in a Bible-section, as the earliest copy of a signed Fore edge is guided.

Jerusalem Delivered , an Heroic Poem, translated from the Italian of Torquato Tasso , by John Hoole . London 1797; with hidden, painted bookcut: Arch of Trajan in Ancona , Tasso in the dungeon, Bridge of Sighs in Venice

In the middle of the 18th century, painting bookcuts with disappearing images came into fashion, initially with floral and allegorical motifs. William Edwards, bookbinder and book dealer in Halifax , around 1750, is considered a pioneer for the art of landscape painting as Fore-edge. He first worked in monochrome in brown and gray tones and later also used the full color palette. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the subjects were expanded to include portraits as well as religious, later also sporty and occasionally pornographic motifs, which often, but not always, had to do with the subject of the book. For example, a copy of the English edition of Karl Heinrich von Bogatzky's edification book Güldenes Schatz-Kästlein der Kinder Gottes , A Golden Treasury for the Children of God , published in London around 1840, had two tennis-playing women painted in its front cut decades later.

Today the British miniature painter and bookbinder Martin Frost works with the art of Fore-edge painting. The American painter and graphic artist Edward Ruscha creates his own artist's books with hidden bookcutting in the printing process .

Bookcut with the Tower of London , 1820–1840

The surviving specimens of the hidden bookcut paintings are mostly of British provenance and come predominantly from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mostly in books from the early 19th century. In Germany, the Würzburg university bookbinder Sebastian Vierheilig (1762–1805) used this technique. The few examples that have survived have received little attention. The term bookcut painting did not establish itself as a correct translation in German-speaking countries; In trade, collectors' and exhibitions, this cut decoration is now consistently used as a fore-edge .

literature

  • Bodo von Drewitz, Werner Nekes (Ed.): I see something that you don't see! Viewing machines and worlds of images. The Werner Nekes Collection. Steidl, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-88243-856-8 , pp. 242, 435.
  • Edith Diehl: Bookbinding. Its background and technique. 2 volumes (in 1). Unabridged and corrected Republication in a single Volume of the Work originally published by Rinehart & Company in 1946 in 2 Volumes. Dover, New York NY 1980, ISBN 0-486-24020-7 , pp. 170-171 .
  • Barbara Krafft: Hide pictures - discover pictures. A visual journey along the cliffs of sight. In: Bodo von Drewitz, Werner Nekes (ed.): I see something that you don't see! Viewing machines and worlds of images. The Werner Nekes Collection. Steidl, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-88243-856-8 , pp. 268-279.
  • Ursula Rautenberg (Hrsg.): Reclams Sachlexikon des Buches. Reclam, Stuttgart 2003, p. 223 ISBN 978-3-15-010520-7
  • Fore-Edge Painting. In: Severin Corsten et al. (Hrsg.): Lexicon of the entire book system. Volume 2: Buck - Foster. Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-7772-8911-6 , p. 629.
  • Pabel, Angelika: For monasteries, bishops and universities . In: Impression, fold and onion fish . Würzburg, 2004, ISBN 3-89913-366-8 , pp. 119-120 and Farbtaf. XIV.
  • Schmitt, Franz Anselm: Precious bindings, rare prints . Karlsruhe, 1974, ISBN 3-7617-0056-3 , pp. 80-81.
  • Gose, Walter: Two gift bindings from the possession of Wattenbach . In: Kurtrierisches Jahrbuch . 31 (1991), pp. 173-182.
  • Marks, Philippa JN: The Edwards of Halifax bindery . In: British Library Journal 24/2 (1998), pp. 210-211 and Fig. 6.
  • Gotha scholar newspapers . 35 (1798), p. 312.
  • Weber, Carl Jefferson: Fore-edge painting: a historical survey of a curious art in book decoration . Irvington-on-Hudson, NY, 1966.
  • Pabel, Angelika: "Würzburg binding with fore-edge painting in the Darmstadt University and State Library". In: Einbandforschung 37 (2015), pp. 27–30.

Web links

Commons : Fore-edge Painting  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Representations

Videos

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Apparatus for obliquely pressing a book
  2. ↑ Werner Nekes Collection: Fore-edge painting
  3. ↑ Fore-edge on the front and undercut
  4. ↑ Bodo von Drewitz, Werner Nekes (ed.): I see something that you don't see! Viewing machines and worlds of images. The Werner Nekes Collection. Steidl, Göttingen 2002, p. 435.
  5. ^ Marist College Archives and Special Collections: The Edwards of Halifax
  6. ^ A b Matt T. Roberts and Don Etherington: Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books. A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology : fore-edge painting
  7. ↑ Homepage of Martin Frost
  8. ^ Edward Ruscha: OH / NO ( Memento from June 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ); Fore-edge Printing , 2008
  9. ^ Gabriel Christoph Benjamin Busch : Handbook of Inventions . Volume 2. Eisenach: JGE Wittekindt, 1804, pp. 269-270 f.

Illustrations

  1. ↑ Thomas Okey (1852-1935): Venice and its Story . Hidden bookcut painting over head, front and undercut by Martin Frost: Canal Grande
  2. ↑ Collection Werner Nekes: Two women playing tennis See also: Bodo von Drewitz, Werner Nekes (Hrsg.): I see what you do not see! Viewing machines and worlds of images. The Werner Nekes Collection. Steidl, Göttingen 2002, p. 242.