[DCRM-L] Signatures question

[Noble, Richard]

Alisa--

 

What you're seeing is a standard 19th-c. signature pattern for
gatherings of six leaves. The printed sheet (actually a half sheet, or
third of a sheet, depending on whether this is 12mo or 18mo) needs to be
divided into two pieces; then the pieces are folded: the larger one
twice, to make four leaves, and the smaller one once to make two leaves;
then the smaller piece is inserted into the middle of the larger piece,
and you've got a gathering of six leaves. (You can fold paper to see how
this works: it's very hard to fold paper in your head.) 19th-c.
printers, in some places, got into the habit of signing the just the
first leaf of the gathering and the first leaf of the "offcut". Using an
asterisk with numeric signatures was the most common pattern; with
letter signatures it was usual to use e.g. A and A2, which is even more
confusing if you don't know what's going on, since leaf A3 in this case
is signed "A2".

 

So, the real formula for your book is simply: 1-96 104

 

If I were providing a "collation" note rather than just a "signatures"
note, I would usually add a signing statement, "[$1,3 signed; signing $3
as '$*']". That looks a bit esoteric: it's just a way of saying that the
first and third leaves of each gathering are signed ("$" is a sort of
algebraic "x" meaning "any signature", so "$3" means "the third leaf of
any signature") and the third leaf is signed by adding an asterisk to
the basic signature.

 

A similar pattern will be found with gatherings of 12 leaves, where the
outer part has 8 leaves and the inner part 4. In this case, the first
and fifth leaves would be signed in the same fashion as the first and
third leaves of gatherings in 6s. (Early in the century some printers
would signed the first, second, and fifth leaves, e.g. A, A2, [no sig.],
[no sig.], A3, which is even more puzzling at first.

RICHARD NOBLE : RARE BOOKS CATALOGER : JOHN HAY LIBRARY : BROWN
UNIVERSITY
PROVIDENCE, RI 02912 : 401-863-1187/FAX 863-2093 :
RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU


________________________________

From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On
Behalf Of Alisa Ellingson
Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2008 6:10 PM
To: dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu
Subject: [DCRM-L] Signatures question



Hello all,

 

I'm a fairly new cataloger, and this is my first post to the list.  I
never post to these lists because I haven't got all the "cataloger
lingo" down, so I hope you'll forgive my inexperience if I say something
wrong!  I am cataloging a 19th-century Italian publication with some
unusual numbering on the signatures.  It starts with two unsigned
leaves, then the first numbered signature says 1* and has four leaves.
Next comes signature 2 with two leaves, then 2* with four leaves, then
3* with two leaves, then 3 with four leaves, and so on and so forth
until 10, which has four leaves.  I hope that makes sense.  Basically,
it looks like this:

 

[1]2 1*4 22 2*4 32 3*4 42 4*4 52 5*4 62 6*4 72 7*4 82 8*4 92 9*4 104

 

I imagine there is a better way to do that, but I don't know how.  It is
in a modern pamphlet binding, which is too tight to see the stitching.
Any ideas?

 

Thanks,

Alisa Ellingson

Special Collections Cataloger

Brigham Young University

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