Posts Tagged ‘Boston Public Library’
“The world was made in order to result in a beautiful book”*…
Revisiting a topic covered here just over a decade ago: Adam Green on the remarkable mid-17th century to the late 19th century practice of publishing books with “hidden art”…
A “fore-edge painting” is an illustration or design which appears on the “fore-edge” of a book (i.e. on the edge which is opened up, opposite to the spine). The history of such embellishments is thought to go back to the tenth century but it wasn’t until the eighteenth century that the unusual practice really began to take off. The simplest form involved painting onto the fore-edge when the book was closed normally — hence the image appears by default — but a more advanced form involved a rather ingenious technique whereby the painting was applied to the page edges when the stack was fanned at a slight angle. This way the image is hidden from view when the book is closed normally. To hide any remnants of this secret image the exposed edge of the book, when closed normally, was gilded (or sometimes marbled). In his 1949 essay “On Fore-Edge Painting of Books” Kenneth Hobson came up with this rather nice metaphor to explain: “Imagine a flight of stairs, each step representing a leaf of the book. On the tread would be the painting and on the flat surface would be gold. A book painted and gilt in this way must be furled back before the picture can be seen.”
Bookbinders, such as Edwards of Halifax, got even cleverer with variations of the technique, producing books with “double fore-edge paintings”, where one image would be revealed when the book was fanned one way, and a second image revealed when fanned the other. “Triple fore-edge paintings” are where a third image is added instead of gilt or marbling. “Panoramic fore-edge paintings” utilise the top and bottom and edges to make continuous panoramic scenes. “Split double paintings” have two different illustrations, one on either side of the book’s centre, meaning that when the book is laid open in the middle, each is seen on either side. Very rare and skilled variations of the art only reveal the image when the the pages of the book are pinched or tented in a certain way.
Most often the artwork would reflect the content of the book (as shown in the chess example above). Sometimes it would depict the owner (through a portrait or picture of their home). And occasionally it would be oddly incongruous, such as The Poetical Works of John Milton being adorned with a painting of the tomb of Thomas Gray.
One of the finest collections of fore-edge paintings is held at Boston Public Library, which you can see on their Flickr, and on a dedicated website, which includes an introductory essay by Anne C. Bromer of Bromer Booksellers, who along with her husband gifted this wonderful collection to the Boston Public Library. In this post we’ve featured our highlights from their collection…
See many more examples at: “Fore-Edge Book Paintings from the Boston Public Library,” from @publicdomainrev.bsky.social.
* Stephane Mallarme
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As we fan the folio, we might send delightfully-illustrated birthday greetings to Michael Bond; he was born on this date in 1926. A writer of both children’s books and teleplays, he is of course best known as the creator of of Paddington Bear.
Bond published the first of his 29 Paddington books in 1958. The series has sold over 35 million copies worldwide (and been featured in several (mostly) animated television series, a film series, and a stage musical).
“Like guns and crosses, maps can be good or bad, depending on who’s holding them, who they’re aimed at, how they’re used, and why”*…
“A New and Accurat [sic] Map of the World,” John Speed 1626. For background, see here
We expect maps to tell us the truth. They seem trustworthy, after all: when you need to figure out how to get from Copley Square to Fenway Park, or if you’re interested in comparing the income levels of Boston’s neighborhoods, the first reference material you’re likely to seek out is a map.
But maps, truth, and belief have a complicated relationship with one another. Every map is a representation of reality, and every representation, no matter how accurate and honest, involves simplification, symbolization, and selective attention. Even when a map isn’t actively trying to deceive its readers, it still must reduce the complexity of the real world, emphasizing some features and hiding others. Compressing the round globe onto a flat sheet of paper, and converting places, people, and statistics into symbols, lines, and colors is a process inherently fraught with distortion.
Meanwhile, what we understand to be true is based on what we have seen in maps. For example, how do you know that New Zealand is an island off the coast of Australia if you’ve never been on a ship in the Tasman Sea or flown up in space to see it yourself? That fact about the world is one you can believe because you’ve seen it reproduced over and over again in maps produced by people and institutions that you trust…
Because they seem to show the world how it “really is,” maps produce a powerful sense of trust and belief. But maps and data visualizations can never communicate a truth without any perspective at all. They are social objects whose meaning and power are produced by written and symbolic language and whose authority is determined by the institutions and contexts in which they circulate. From the Boston Public Library’s Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, a remarkable online exhibit that explores the many ways in which maps and data can mislead: BENDING LINES: Maps and Data from Distortion to Deception. (Lots of fascinating information and LOTS of glorious maps!)
See also: “How to Detect the Distortions of Maps.”
And lest we underestimate the innate challenges facing cartographers, “The U.S. Is Getting Shorter, as Mapmakers Race to Keep Up.”
* Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps
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As we aspire to accuracy, we might recall that it was on this date in 1784 that Élisabeth Thible became the first women to ascend in an untethered balloon (eight months after the first manned balloon flight). When the balloon left the ground Thible, dressed as the Roman goddess Minerva, and her pilot, Monsieur Fleurant sang two duets from Monsigny’s La Belle Arsène, a celebrated opera of the time. The flight lasted 45 minutes, covered four kilometers, and achieved an estimated height of 1,500 meters. Their audience included King Gustav III of Sweden, in whose honor the balloon was named.
Élisabeth Thible on a later flight
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