The anatomy of a book includes the fore-edge, or the vertical outer edge of a closed volume. The American Heritage Center’s Toppan Rare Books Library holds fourteen specimens of disappearing fore-edge paintings. Eight of these were collected by Charles Chacey Kuehn (1906-1978). Kuehn owned the Rocking Chair Ranch in Dubois, Wyoming. He was a graduate of the University of Wyoming, having been affiliated with the College of Agriculture and the American Studies program. Additionally, there are six disappearing fore-edge paintings on three volume sets in the Fred and Clara Toppan Collection, the Fitzhugh Collection, and the Coe Pre-1850 Collection.
To have a library or any number of books was once a privilege of the higher classes, the monarchy, and the church. The desire to decorate one’s books is well over a thousand years old. The practice of fore-edge decoration is rooted in the tenth century when books were displayed with their edges facing outward rather than inward as we are accustomed to today. One identified a book on the shelf by its unique fore-edge patterns. Beginning in the fourteenth century, elite people who could afford costly books began placing heraldry colored with expensive pigments on fore-edges as a method of declaring ownership. In the sixteenth century, royal bookbinder Thomas Berthelet (d. 1555) began painting the Tudor family crest on the edges of Henry VIII’s books.
During the reign of Charles II, the king’s bookbinder, Samuel Mearne (1624-1683), is thought to have developed a new and instantly popular form of fore-edge decoration in England: the disappearing painting. One of Mearne’s painters , John Fletcher, has been identified by his signature. Fletcher may have been the first to shroud the disappearing painting under gilding.
A book with a disappearing fore-edge painting required an extremely skilled hand. After the artist burnished the edges, they clamped the book’s pages in a fanned position. The artist then coated the edges with a layer of alum water – a mixture of water and the sulphureous powder that coats alum stones. The effect of this substance was two-fold: it kept the pigments from sinking into the paper and increased their vibrancy and longevity. Once the alum had dried, the fore-edge went through a process of wetting and drying five times to lock in the alum. Only then did the artist proceed to paint a watercolor miniature or landscape befitting the genre of the book. Once the painting was completely dry, the book could be unclamped and re-clamped in its normal closed position. After applying a film of egg white glair along the edge, the artist finished off with two coats of gold leaf to protect the painting beneath and burnished it to a high shine.
Popularity of fore-edge painting peaked between 1785 and 1830 in London when production of books with disappearing fore-edge decoration accelerated. Bookbinder William Edwards (~1722-1808) was a master of the art and opened his own bookbinding firm in Halifax during this era. His bookbindery became known for its fore-edge work along with its vellum paintings and calf skin bindings. Edwards of Halifax was the first to produce landscape paintings that ran the full length of the edge. By then demand for painted fore-edges had risen and created a market that did not rely solely on commissioned work. It was also common enough to commission a painting after a book had been bound and sold to increase its value. One must always be aware of the fact that a book and its fore-edge painting may not be the same age.
Edwards of Halifax also had a habit of painting specific imagery on specific genres of books. For instance, English poetry was likely to be decorated with fore-edge scenes of “rural landscapes and moonlight views of ruined abbeys” while the classics frequently bear images of country estates. Furthermore, sporting books were adorned with lively hunting scenes. Although other printers deviated from these rules, the three images referenced below are examples of these common themes.
There is evidence that Edwards of Halifax employed numerous painters to meet the demand. John Harris (1769-1832) and James Boulton were paid by Edwards to produce paintings of insects, fruit, flowers, seascapes, and miniatures. From documentary records, it is probable that Edwards employed women artists as well. A letter written by one Mrs. Thrale in 1812 describes Thrale’s visit to Edwards of Halifax and seeing a lady hard at work on a fore-edge painting.
By the early nineteenth century, fore-edge painting increasingly became a woman’s craft. Though popularity of the trade dropped off after 1850, it renewed again fifty years later. During this “Golden Age,” the twentieth century witnessed one of the most important fore-edge painters: Miss C. B. Currie, from London. Currie worked exclusively for Henry Sotheran & Co. Her contribution to fore-edge art remained largely unnoticed until the early 2000s thanks to her faithful practice of signing and numbering her works.
A revival in fore-edge painting led by Alfred De Saunty took place in Chicago between 1923 and 1935. Then around the beginning of the Second World War, a Hollywood based artist named Vera Dutter rediscovered the disappearing fore-edge. Dutter was self-taught and worked alone, but she eventually produced over four hundred paintings between 1939 and 1989. Both she and Currie preferred to paint the edges of old books. Not only was the paper of better quality, but purchasing antique books with existing gilded edges from bookshops in Hollywood and Los Angeles also saved Dutter the expense of gilding them herself.
Caption: News article from the Golden Rain News, July 17, 1980.
It was also during the mid-twentieth century that fore-edge painting expanded its geographic reach. Chinese examples are usually dated from 1936 to 1942 and were sometimes painted vertically along the edge. Toppan’s vertical fore-edges may well have been created by a Chinese artist. Jeff Weber points out that Chinese artists did not have unlimited amounts of gold leaf at their disposal. The vibrant paintings on the Poetical Works of Vincent Bourne are only partially concealed under gilding.
The Toppan Library holds only one example of a double disappearing fore-edge painting. Earlier scholars have argued that it was an invention of Edwards of Halifax in the 1790s. However, rare book dealer Jeff Weber insists that no double fore-edge was done prior to 1900. While he has not been able to definitively say just when the first double fore-edge was produced, Weber notes examples from the 1920s and after 1945. Vera Dutter is known to have added a few doubles to her voluminous bevy of fore-edges.
Fore-edge painting is going through yet another revival in the present-day. There has been a distinct shift since the COVID-19 pandemic in which young people gravitate back to tangible items and prefer object permanence. In an increasingly digital society that exalts cheaply made goods and engenders ever-shortening attention spans, younger generations have begun to look for ways to add value and uniqueness to their physical possessions. If your social media algorithm is just right, you’ll stumble upon the work of many free-lance fore-edge painters. In the corporate world, Barnes and Noble has recently added special editions of popular works with stenciled and sprayed edges as well as a DIY fore-edge stenciling kit to their sale catalogue. Moreover, a recent minimalist trend that favors shelving one’s books with the edges facing outward may have informed a maximalist trend to paint those edges – a reminder of Anglo-Saxon English practices. Whether or not contemporary fore-edge painters know of what they imitate, we are seeing an important revival and expansion of a very old art form.
Post contributed by Toppan Rare Books Library Archives Specialist Emma Comstock. Photos by Grace Derby.
References
“A Chinese Fore-Edge Painting.” Colby Library Quarterly 3 (August 1955): 67.
“The History and Technique of Fore-edge Painting.” Connoisseur 200, no. 804 (February 1979): 128-130.
Hughes, G. Bernard. “English Fore-Edge Paintings.” Country Life 122, no. 3167 (Sep. 26, 1957): 602-603.
“Lady Lions Learn of Disappearing Pictures.” The Golden Rain Seal Beach Leisure World News (Seal Beach, CA), Jul. 17, 1980.
MacDonald, Mona. “Early Art of Fore-Edge Painting.” The Christian Science Monitor, Jul. 26, 1947.
Marks, P. J. M. “The Edwards of Halifax Bindery.” The British Library Journal 24, no. 2 (Autumn 1998): 184-218.
Weber, Carl J. Fore-Edge Painting: A Historical Survey of a Curious Art in Book Decoration. New York: Harvey House, Inc., 1966.
Weber, Jeff. Annotated Dictionary of Fore-Edge Painting Artists & Binders. Los Angeles: Jeff Weber Rare Books, 2010.
Weber, Jeff. “Fore-edge Painting: From the Seventeenth through Twenty-first Centuries.” Jeff Weber Rare Books no. 156 (December 2009).
