Many Years Ago,

I spent 5 years as an apprentice,

in a printing company, the building was a converted silk mill in Lewisham, South East London, but that is another story, whilst there I was fascinated by the bookbindery, so many books would come in to be repaired, some to have their fly leaves, end papers or fore-edges to be re-marbled, some to have yapped edges repaired or replaced, a few even arrived complete with locks and keys to stop people opening the covers, antique books arrived every few weeks at the bindery, 

but one book I have never seen is one with secret fore-edge painting, the skill is believed to date back as early as the 1650s, it is a way of hiding a painting on the edge of a book so that it can only be seen when the pages are fanned out, there are even books that have double fore-edge paintings, where a different image can be seen by flipping the book over and fanning the pages in the opposite direction, 

but when the book is closed the fore-edge looks like any other book with a gold fore-edge, a few days ago Colleen Theisen who helps with outreach and instruction at the Special Collections & University Archives at the University of Iowa shared an amazing gif she made that demonstrates fore-edge painting on the edge of a 1837 book called Autumn by Robert Mudie, (who wrote and compiled altogether about ninety volumes) what an amazing art, I mean who would have thought of it back in the 1650s?