Example of a single fore-edge painting.
*Source: Milner, Alfred Milner, Viscount, 1854-1925. England in Egypt.
New edition. London : Arnold, 1894.
The technique of fore-edge painting was developed in the middle of the 17th century, but was little practiced until the end of the 18th century, coming into an efflorescence in the 19th century. The method was to fan the fore-edge of the text block (the outer edge) and clamp it. Then, a water color painting would be executed on the fanned leaves. When dry, the fore-edge would most commonly be gilt, less commonly marbled. With this concealment, the existence of the painting would be unknown unless the fore-edge was fanned.
Example of a double fore-edge painting, in which a
different scene is revealed when the text block is fanned in either direction.
*Source:
Walton, Izaak, 1593-1683. The complete angler of Izaak Walton and Charles
Cotton. Second edition. London : John Major, 1824.
Special Collections has acquired a significant collection
of both single fore-edge paintings and double fore-edge paintings. The
collection was dedicated to the memory of the late Miss Nancy Karnes Bird,
former Head of Special Collections from 1960 to 1974. Some fine examples
of this British art of decorating the gilded fore-edge of a book with a
hidden painting in the collection are a seven-volume set of The Poetical
Works of William Wordsworth (1846) with a different Lake District view
on each volume; Vaughan's Silex Scintillans: Sacred Poems and Private
Ejaculations (1847), showing a rural scene, and a miniature book of
Isaac Williams' Thoughts in Past Years (1943), with a view of Strawberry
Hill from the river hidden under gilt gauffered edges.