Fascinating Book Stuff.

By pure chance, I stumbled across a curious and fascinating thing to do with books a while ago: Fore-edge painting.

You never heard about that? Welcome to the club - I had no clue what that meant, so I looked it up... and it's amazing. Let me try to explain.

When you open a book, the pages shift slightly, so that they are not completely stacked atop each other, but a bit staggered. Fore-edge painting means that you paint on these tiny staggered strips of paper that are just, juuuust on the edge of the page.

And here's the clincher: You gilt the edges of the pages, and when you close the book, the painting completely disappears. It's incredible, and there's almost nobody left who does this, but I can give you one link to a crafter in the UK: Foredge Frost. (There's pictures on the website. Enjoy.)