The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments: Translated out of the Original Tongues: and with the Former Translations Diligently Compared and Revised, By His Majesty’s Command. [Fore-edge Painting].

Item Number: 139538

Oxford: Printed at the Clarendon Press, by W. Jackson and W. Dawson, 1794.

Rare 18th century King James Bible decorated with an exceptionally large early 19th century fore-edge painting. Large quarto, bound in full straight grain morocco with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands over red morocco onlays, gilt ruling and scrolling to the front and rear panels with red morocco inlayed borders and central decorated panel, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, all edges gilt, decorated with a concealed fore-edge painting of a scene from Genesis in which Sarah and Abraham offer hospitality to three visitors. In very good condition. An unusually fine and large early fore-edge painting.

The term 'fore-edge painting' can refer to any painted decoration on the fore-edges of the leaves of a book, such as was not uncommon in the 15th and early 16th centuries, particularly in Italy. The term is most commonly used, however, for an English technique quite widely practiced in the second half of the 17th century in London and Edinburgh, and popularized in the 18th century by John Brindley and, in particular, Edwards of Halifax, whereby the fore-edge of the book, very slightly fanned out and then held fast, is decorated with painted views, or conversation pieces. The edges are then squared up and gilded in the ordinary way, so that the painting remains concealed while the book is closed: fan out the edges and it reappears. The technique was practiced by a few other English binders in the late 18th and 19th centuries, and a certain number of undoubted examples survive. The majority of extant examples of fore-edge paintings date to the late 19th and early 20th century on reproductions of books originally published in the early 19th century.