paper

Holiday treasure hunt: printer’s waste

  • Inner face of left board. Pulp board made from recycled printed waste.
  • Inner face of left board. Pulp board made from recycled printed waste.
The pulp boards of a binding from the second half of the seventeenth century in a Bodleian book, shelfmark fol. BS. 12 (t. 13) have a large fragment of printed waste visible – can it be identified?

Andrew Honey, Bodleian book and paper conservator, sends this puzzle:

Volume 13 of Conciliorum omnium, generalium et prouincialium collectio regia. Paris, 1644, 37 vols ; (folio), shelfmark fol. BS 12 (t. 13) contains the printed waste shown here.

The boards might have been made to bind the book in Oxford. We know from inventories that Oxford binders were making their own pulp boards – the inventory of Henry Bluett lists “a paire of pastbord moules, a presse to make pastbords” and Roger Barnes has “a trough to make pastboords”. What printed leaves were they using?