Pages and Pages

After preparing my 'parchment sheets', the next job was to make them into pages for the book. The batches of pages folded together are called quires, and these will be stacked together to form the book - eventually.

I began by folding my parchments, first into 2 (in folio).I folded again to give 4 leaves (so 8 pages, called in-quarto), and then folded again to give 8 leaves (so 16 pages - in-octavo).

I had a go at different ways of making the quires. 

On the left, four pieces of parchment have been cut, folded and stacked inside each other to form the quire. This will be a quarternio made up of  four bifolia. The second picture shows six pieces of parchment to form a quire - a senio.

Both these examples obey Gregory’s Rule, which states that a page on the hair side should always be opposite another page showing the hair side, and the same with the flesh side.

Here I have ’hooked in’ an extra leaf into the quire. The short edge of parchment is called a ‘stop’ to keep the extra leaf in place.

I tried some different methods of folding quarterniones. None of the edges have been cut yet.

Top left- two sheets placed with like sides facing and then folded into 4.

Top right - one sheet folded three times, to give a single sheet with 16 pages.

Bottom left - two sheets each folded into 4, and then one place inside the other. 

Bottom right - four sheets each folded into 2 and then placed inside each other. 

I added cords to keep my quires together.

This sheet has been folded in-octavio and remains in one piece. Here the text can be 'imposed' - written on the uncut sheet, very carefully so that none of the finished pages are upside down or in the wrong place. It will then be refolded and cut to produce the quire..

Finally, I have added signatures on the back of each quire to show the order they will be bound in. I’ve used Roman numerals and placed them in the centre of the lower margin.