Deckle edges

I recently bought a copy of The Poems of William Blake published by Brentano. Forgive me if Brentano is not fine press, but I'm new at this (I just started looking at "old books" during the pandemic). The paper is pleasing to the eye and the fingers—and the letterpress is deep.

My question is about deckle edges. I'm wondering why some pages are so much shorter (horizontally) than others. There are a few pages that are about 1/2 to 3/4-inch shorter than their neighbors. The book isn't the kind that had to be cut open in order to be readable.

Also, why are some pages perfectly straight-edged? They look machine cut.

I bought this item on my first trip to my local library bookstore. I paid $4 for it and discovered, upon looking up the name on the bookplate, that it belonged to a noted bibliophile!

>1 maisiedotes: The top edge of a deckle edged book is usually machine cut to a straight edge to prevent it from getting stained with dust (easy to wipe clean). It is often dyed or gilded.

>1 maisiedotes:

I'm wondering why some pages are so much shorter (horizontally) than others.

If the book is sewn in signatures, and the pages not trimmed, this is normal (although 1/2 - 3/4" seems a lot). You can see why if you take several sheets of paper, fold each in half, and nest them. The edge of the inside page will extend the furthest.

>2 kdweber: Thanks, the tops are all machine-cut, but I'm surprised by the occasional perfectly straight side edge.

>3 lilithcat: Thanks, that makes sense.

I would take a picture, but I haven't learned how to upload photos to a post. I'm willing to learn, though, if someone can point the way!

>4 maisiedotes:, >5 the_bb:

You can actually host it here, in your Member Gallery or Junk Drawer.

>5 the_bb:
>6 lilithcat:

Thanks for the tips! I'm off to try now!

Here's a photo showing the short pages in my Blake.

One more try, this time with the pages more or less flat against one another:

To reiterate my initial question, now that I've uploaded two photos: why are some pages so much shorter than others? Is it because some sheets of shorter paper were used? Is this what deckle pages normally look like?

Grr! I see my photos on LT on my computer but not on my phone. If anyone can elucidate, I'd appreciate it.

>11 maisiedotes: Send them to me via email and I'll post them for you ;)

>11 maisiedotes: the problem is that you linked to an email attachment rather than an uploaded image url. (If you right-click on the image link above and open it in a new tab or “copy image location” you can see that it points to a URL starting with mail.google.com which shows up on your computer probably because you are signed into Gmail.)

Here are the pictures, mentioned by maisiedotes in messages >8 maisiedotes:, >9 maisiedotes:

>10 maisiedotes: Hand made and mould made papers are produced in sheets that do not have straight edges. When folded into sections, those uneven edges are the "deckle" edges you see. These edges can sometimes be extreme depending on the papermaker. Usually, they are trimmed either completely off or only slightly to cut off the folds and produce a neater edge. However, fine press books very often are not trimmed at all when bound, and sometimes the folds are also left for the buyer to open rather than trim them off. Whether that is a desirable thing or not depends upon the collector.

As >2 kdweber: above noted, the top edge is often trimmed smooth. Trimming is either by hand (in a bookpress using a plough) or with a guillotine, but not always. Some fine press books leave the top edge uncut and rough gilded, but this is not recommended, as it makes for a great dust trap.

The purpose of gilding the edges, especially the top edge, is two-fold: (1) it seals the edge against dust, and (2) looks pretty.

>15 Glacierman: Thanks for the info. The top edges of my Blake are gilded but very dull-looking.

As you can see in the photo, a couple of pages are 1/2 to 3/4 inch shorter than average and one of them even looks folded. Strange.

>16 maisiedotes: "As you can see in the photo, a couple of pages are 1/2 to 3/4 inch shorter than average and one of them even looks folded. Strange."

Not at all strange, quite normal actually. There may well be a folded fore-edge in which case you will have to carefully slit that fold. Sometimes, the differences in the amount of deckle is rather large, reflecting an unevenly formed sheet.

Is toning or slight browning of deckle edges considered to be a serious defect by most book collectors?

If I understand correctly, this is not quite the same as foxing, which usually appears as spots and blotches on bindings and pages. But, like foxing, is it also caused by adverse environmental conditions, or just a tendency of the rough, exposed, edge to age tone in a slightly different way?

Often I see otherwise perfect books where the rough edges are somewhat toned.

>18 GardenOfForkingPaths: Browning of deckle edges is usually attributed to (1) sunlight, or (2) dust/dirt. You very rarely get foxing on high quality paper, whether handmade or mould made. Most books printed as long ago as the dawn of printing from metal type (think Gutenberg, et seq.) are as pristine as the day they were printed, assuming they haven't been subjected to adverse conditions during their lives.

>19 Glacierman: Thank you! That makes sense.

It shows the value of a slipcase in protecting the page edges from the two factors that you mentioned, even when the environmental conditions are otherwise pretty good, and especially when a book has been around for many decades.

>20 GardenOfForkingPaths: Indeed! I once had a small book with some massive deckles. It was issued without a slipcase. Over the decades, those deckles had gathered a lot of dirt. They were, in fact, grey and brown. Returning them to their original white would have required taking the book apart and washing the sheets, then rebinding it, a procedure far too expensive to justify using on this inexpensive, if finely printed, book. The alternative was to re-bind and trim those edges back. I was able to leave enough deckle to hint at what had been.

A slipcase would have eliminated the problem and the book would still have the excessive deckle. By the way, the paper used was hand made and thus the crazy deckle.

>14 Lukas1990: The scarcely-used and beautiful Florence type! 😍