Hold the front pages: meet the endpaper enthusiasts

Endpapers date back to at least the 15th century, when pieces of old manuscript or vellum would be used to help sew a book block into its binding, and to protect it. Membership of We Love Endpapers has mushroomed over the last two years, says antiquarian bookseller Simon Beattie, who initially founded the group just for his friends. Far from the madding crowd of today’s politics, the book lovers discuss, in painstaking detail, the different techniques used: marbling, sprinkling, block-printing, embossing …

“LOVELY,” proclaims one member describing an 18th-century Scottish binding’s decorative endpapers.

Source: www.theguardian.com