Where has the Beauty of Bookbinding Gone? Exploring Gauffered Edges

In a previous post I talked about finding some beautifully bound books in University of the Pacific's library that had some beautiful designs stamped onto the edges of their pages.

A little bit of digging provided some insight into the rarely seen practice. The technique is called gauffered edges, and was popular in the 16th and 17th centuries before falling out of fashion.

More pictures and history of gauffered edges after the jump.

The Library as a Museum: Part Two

Another installment of our library as art series focuses today on the library as an artistic muse.

This view of the stacks at University of the Pacific's library can be the first trip down the rabbit hole for some

More photos after the jump

The Lost Art of the Bookplate

Older books have certain qualities that endear me to them in a way that can't really be recreated in the modern world of book publishing. Namely the carefully hand-stamped leather covers, covers meant to last. But there is a feature that seems to exist only in older books that I can't understand how it doesn't translate over to the contemporary: bookplates. A bookplate is a stamp or sticker with the name of the owner printed on it, often with decorative detail. If you are going to build a library, better to have a fanciful way to claim your books, though sometimes a simple scawl across the title page sufficed.

Photos and examples after the jump...

The Library as a Museum: Part One

When I was little, my mom used to take us to the public library once a week during the summer. It was my favorite place to be in the world. Especially the Children's Library, where a squeaky voiced lady with a face like a bird mask (think expressive and interesting, not scary) would tell us the most wonderful stories with puppets and let us play with musical instruments. I always got the tambourine.

As I got older, the library maintained its wonder and mystique. I was fascinated by the idea that thousands upon thousands of people could come to one place and check out books that had passed through the hands of more people than they would ever meet in their life. I thought that if I was ever to come back in another life as an inanimate object, I should like for it to be a book so that I could be in a library and meet all kinds of interesting people and go to new places.

At University of the Pacific students and faculty have access to a wonderful source of books. One of my favorite things to do on campus is walk around the stacks and explore some of the older, rarer books. I spent a couple hours this week photographing some of the more interesting tomes in Pacific's collection.

The stacks seem to just go on and on at University of the Pacific Library