Binding waste
Binding waste is damaged, misprinted, or surplus paper or
endpapers
, or as a reinforcement beneath the spine.
Especially in medieval and early modern bookbinding, it was common to use discarded or defective sheets to reinforce bindings, even if they had already been used for writing or printing. This practice has led to the survival of texts which may otherwise have been lost. Binding waste can also help to provide a date, and in some cases a location, for the manuscript or printed texts which it accompanies.
Binder's waste, derived from discarded books, has been distinguished from 'printer's waste' (proofs and misprinted sheets) and 'bookseller's waste'.[3]
See also
- Fragmentology, the study of manuscript fragments
- Palimpsest, a manuscript page reused to write another document
References
- ^ Peter Beal, A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology, 1450-2000 (Oxford University Press, 2008), page 37.
- (Oak Knoll Press/The British Library, 8th edition, 2004), page 229.
- ^ Joseph A. Dane, 'Printer's Waste/Binding Waste', The Myth of Print Culture: Essays on Evidence, Textuality, and Bibliographical Method (University of Toronto Press, 2003), page 61.
Further reading
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Binding waste.
- Jessica Leigh Hester, The Surprising Practice of Binding Old Books With Scraps of Even Older Books, Atlas Obscura (June 11, 2018)
- Elizabeth Ryan, Hidden treasures: Encounters with binder's waste in Stanford Libraries Conservation Department, Stanford Libraries Blog (April 2, 2020)
- Rita Udina, Disjecta membra and recycled bookbindings (October, 2021)