This Book Hides a Painting

Transcript

At first, these golden page edges look ordinary, with no picture in sight.

Gently fan the pages, and a hidden landscape appears. It's called fore-edge painting.

Artists painted the pages while fanned, let them dry, then closed the book.

Gold on the closed edge concealed the picture, leaving the painted slivers tucked just out of sight.

Fan the pages again, and those slivers come together to reveal the scene.

Some books even hide two paintings, revealed by fanning the pages in opposite directions.

A whole gallery, hiding in a book's edges.

Attribution

Archival footage: Cornell University Library, Evan Earle; collection images: Folger Shakespeare Library and Boston Public Library; original illustrative cover and animation by AskPandi; voiceover generated with ElevenLabs. ^{[1] [2] [3]}