From time to time, Claude Cox of Ipswich, that marvellous shop specialising in the arts of printing, would offer for sale a collection of individual leaves from key books. I assumed this was an ingenious means of capitalising on damaged volumes. It certainly gave me access to some fine examples of printing. Using a decent scanner, much more of the fabric and design of printing after 1500 became available in ways that were satusfying for study, and also avoided the buttock clenching terror of copyright law.

Each leaf is a mute witness of what can happen to the printed page. In the details you will explore the finesse (and otherwise) of the way letterforms are inked into paper in the service of meaning; the ways that the letterforms are deployed across the surface of the paper with decoration, rules, empty space and playing to the printed image. Here you will explore the limits of the page, the observance of the edge of the paper, and the damage that can be done, from bruising to tears, splashes and abrasions.

I have added indicative pages over the years, mainly from Facsimiles.

Although I am urged to place a black sheet behind the printed page to avoid the unsightliness of the appearence of the reverse of the page, I enjoy the mute presence of the verso, a reversed echo, a ghostly presence under that which I am reading.

Here too the human hand has intervened, in marginalia, accidental marks, and in the leaf of the 1549 Bible, an elaborate calculation of a forgotten task in ink down the margin.