VIII. Endpapers

(Fig. 7)
Cut sheets of your choice of endpaper (should be fairly heavy stock; some really nice marbled papers may be had, or you can marble some yourself- again, write me for the procedure) to the same size as your manuscript sheets (7.5" X 9").

It should be noted at this point that all work on the covering, including any decoration that involves attaching things to the boards by nailing through them (such as putting on clasps and straps, brass corners, etc.) must be completed before the endpapers are glued on. The endpapers are essentially the final step, except for tooling or other non-invasive elaboration of the covering.

Cover one surface of the endpaper sheets and the interior surfaces of the book, verso and recto, onto which the endpapers are to be glued with craft paste (be careful to minimize wrinkling). Press the papers onto the book surfaces carefully, making certain that the outside pages cover the folded edges of the covering. The inside pages should match the first or last page of the manuscript exactly, or be trimmed accordingly if they do not. The endpapers must be positioned so that they allow the book to close properly, and yet do not exhibit a pronounced bunching at the fold. This step probably takes the most skill/luck to achieve successfully.

Prop the manuscript vertically, to allow the endpapers to dry more thoroughly (Fig. 7a). When they have dried, close the book and place it in a press. Press it for several hours, preferably overnight. During this time the cover will stretch and dry completely, and the book will set properly, so that it lies flat.

If you have used any cloth in the covering, you may wish to coat it with a protective covering of some kind, such as dope or clear leather finish. Leather may also be protected in this way, especially if any tooling or painting is done.

One final note: if you do any painting or gilding on a leather cover, it is wise to recess the area to be gilt or painted first, to reduce the action of rubbing on the decorated portion.

Do not subject the book to excesses in temperature, or to moisture, and be careful when handling the pages. Most of all, be proud of your work!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cockerell, D. Bookbinding and the Care of Books. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1901.

Diehl, E. Bookbinding: its Background and Technique, vol. 1. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, Inc., 1946.

Diriger, D. The Book Before Printing. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1982.

Lamb, C. M., ed. The Calligrapher's Handbook. New York: Pentalic Corporation, 1951.

Middleton, B. C. A History of English Craft Binding Technique. New York: Hafner Publishing Company, 1963.

Putnam, G. H. Books and their Makers during the Middle Ages, vol. 1. New York: Hillary House Publishers Ltd., 1896.

Appendix: Manuscript Layout

For those of you who want to produce a book in which you (or someone else, for that matter) have already done the lettering and/or artwork, the following will present the layout guide that I use for my own books.

The first consideration will be the number of pages in the book. You will have to know this before you start, or at least have a close approximation, if you want to have the right number and size of sections. The way I do it is to figure out beforehand exactly what my text will be, count the number of characters I will be putting on a page, based on the calligraphic parameters of the text, add room for whatever illumination and illustration will be incorporated, and divide the (estimated) total number of characters in the text by the number of characters per page. This should give you, if you are lucky, a fair estimate of the total number of pages you will need. If you miss, don't worry: you can add another partial section or leave some blank pages, if you need to. Modern publishers do it all the time.

The next step is to figure out how many sections you need. This will depend on the number of sheets per section that you choose. Modern books contain anywhere from 4 to 25 sheets per section, depending primarily on the weight of paper being used. I recommend 4 to 6 sheets per section. Fewer than 4 and you start to run the risk of tearing; more than 6 and it gets difficult to sew well. Remember that each sheet makes four pages. A 100 page book would then have, say, 5 sections of 5 sheets each.

The first and last pages of the manuscript are going to have endpapers and leather joints glued to them; this lessens their desirability as pages upon which anything is actually drawn or written substantially (at least in my view). I customarily add 3 sheets to my final total for the text and artwork: this allows for endpapers, title page, and dedication (of course, if you got lucky and hit the needed number of pages exactly, it also leaves six pages at the end, five if you include a closing statement, or colophon, so you might take that into account and add only one or two sheets. I seldom hit it that closely, however).

Numbering the pages is not really period, but if you want to do it, this is the format:

I will use a section of five sheets for this example. You should by this point be able to guess that a section of five sheets will contain 20 pages. If you do not see how this is so, go back to
Collating.

I will use a shorthand method for denoting sheets and pages. The abbreviations are: L =left hand pages of a sheet; R =right hand pages of a sheet (remember that each sheet has two sets of verso and recto pages, one on the left, and one on the right); v =verso page; r =recto page.

The order in which abbreviations appear is Sheet Number:Side of Sheet:Page designation. 1:R:v, therefore, is sheet number one, right-hand side, verso page. With all of this in mind, here we go.

Numbered Page (of section) Location of Page

1 1:L:r

2 1:L:v

3 2:L:r

4 2:L:v

5 3:L:r

6 3:L:v

7 4:L:r

8 4:L:v

9 5:L:r

10 5:L:v

11 5:R:r

12 5:R:v

13 4:R:r

14 4:R:v

15 3:R:r

16 3:R:v

17 2:R:r

18 2:R:v

19 1:R:r

20 1:R:v

If that were section one of a book with multiple sections, then in the second section, 1:L:r would be page 21, and so on. Simple.

A few important caveats: Always begin sewing with the last section if you start with the spine facing left and the book right side-up. If for some reason you wish to start with the book upside down and the spine facing left, start with the first section (assuming that you add sections by placing them on top of the previous one, that is). With spine facing to the right, the opposite orientation holds: Right side-up, start with the first section; upside down, start with the last section (for you Organic Chemists and Crystallographers, the spine represents an enantiomeric axis).

Figures

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