Ever wonder what the love child of books and painting would look like? Me too.
One of our favourite things to do is peruse local bookstores at home in Melbourne and when travelling.
One that stands out for me is an awesome antiquarian bookstore in Vancouver, Canada, called E.C. Rare Books.
I stumbled across it while on the hunt for the best coffee and cafes in Vancouver. Inevitably I found my way to the cafe Revolver in Gastown, which is the historical neighbourhood of Vancouver. Right downstairs is E.C. Rare Books.
The folks at E.C. Rare Books were super friendly and made an effort to get me excited about rare books. One of the ways they did this was showing me beautiful examples of fore-edge painting.
“A fore-edge painting is a scene painted on the edges of book pages. There are two basic forms, including paintings on fanned edges and closed edges.
For the first type, the book’s leaves must be fanned, exposing the pages’ edges for the picture to become visible. For the second, closed type, the image is visible only while the book is closed.” (Wikipedia)
Here are some examples from the E.C. Rare Books website.
Fun tips:
- E.C. Rare Books also do book binding workshops
- Fore-edge painting dates back to the 10th Century
- Fore-edge painting makes more sense when you know that at the time it was customary to store books horizontally with the fore-edge facing outward; as opposed to what we are used to now, which is vertically with the spine facing outward.
For other interesting information about books, painting, and psychological research and practice, check out my blog, connect on LinkedIn, and listen to Psych Attack podcast.
Interested in discovering new cafes and places to eat? Listen to My mate in… podcast.
Check out my paintings in the Tangent exhibition in Northcote, Melbourne. Closing this Sunday.
Feature image by Virginia Marinova