Unfinished Project #4 (Marbled Fore-edges)

There are always a few unfinished projects on the shelf. Usually, these unfinished projects are personal projects which get shelved when custom orders and other paid projects come along. I do, though, try to go back to the shelf of unfinished projects periodically, and finish things.

This particular project was started in May 2011. At that time, I was taking a class at PBI and for the work we were doing in that class, we had a bookbinding plough at our disposal. I don't have a plough at home, so I decided to take advantage of this temporary access. A plough is used to trim the edges of a text block, to create very smooth even edges. It is necessary for certain bindings and it is necessary for fore-edge decoration. I decided to create a couple of textblocks and plough the edges so that I could bring them home and marble them.

These two ploughed textblocks sat on the shelf of unfinished projects for almost two years, until February 2013. At that time, I blew off the dust, and finally marbled the edges of those two text blocks. I had never done fore-edge marbling before, but it worked pretty well. Once I had a marble pattern that I liked, I dipped the textblock and made a matching sheet of paper to be used later on the covers.

I quickly moved the dipped textblock into a press.

I did that with both textblocks and left them in the press until they were dry. Then the textblocks went back onto the shelf. Fast-forward to February 2014, and I finally found the time to turn the text blocks into books, with their matching marbled paper covers.

Now, another month later, I finally photographed the finished books and shared the whole story here. A very satisfying finished project, for sure, even if it did take me three years.