ABSTRACT

The ancients, with their oak boards, sometimes ignored their use altogether; but, to speak generally, end papers have been considered a necessary part of the binder’s work from the earliest times. The end papers of a book serve both a decorative and a utilitarian purpose. The advantage of zigzag end paper is that it has a double fold to sew through without any threads appearing in the fold of the joint. The main objection raised to the end paper is the excessive number of flys preceding the book, yet to some minds the fact constitutes a great advantage. The strip of the first, and the whole of the second leaf, was finally pasted together over the board, leaving two protecting leaves at either end of the book. For more than a century the most generally accepted papers for book ends in permanent bindings have been “marble” papers of an infinite variety of patterns.