Ornament on the Edge: Types and Techniques of Edge Decoration on Medieval Books

Many medieval books are beautiful objects to behold, with covers of leather or sumptuous velvet, decorated with gold tooling or embroidery and ornamented with elaborate metal corner bosses and clasps. The mix of functional form and complex ornament can be breathtaking, before the reader even considers the design and decoration of the interior pages. One element frequently overlooked in book decoration, but which greatly adds to the visual impact of the book as object, is edge decoration of the leaves, which together form the text block. The term edge decoration refers to the decoration of the edges of the pages visible when the book is closed, not the borders that may be painted onto individual pages. This is sometimes called fore-edge decoration, but technically fore-edge refers to the edge of the book opposite the spine, not to all three visible page edges. 1 From the fourth century, edges of books have been decorated, first with stains or paints, then later with complex painted designs and gold leaf. In this article, we discuss 1 For a more complete description of the parts of a book binding, refer to Figure 17 on p. 30 of P. J. M