In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 4 Oct 1992 00:26:58 CDT
Message-id: <"vIuQa2.0.A74.VOBCn"@sul2>
Sender: Rare Books and Special Collections Forum <EXLIBRIS@RUTVM1.BITNET>
I didn't save a copy of my last message, so I'm not entirely certain what I
actually said; however, the point I was trying to make was that it is
possible to fold a quarto or octavo sheet so that the proper first page is
on top of the folded sheet but the rest of the leaves are out of order. If
you first fold the quarto sheet vertically instead of horizontally, it
could be out of order or in order, depending on what one wished for. If a
sheet meant to be folded one way first was folded the other way first, the
leaves would be out of order. The proper first page would still be on top
in either case.
I have in fact encountered instances of quarto sheets folded vertically first.
In one instance, I had a quarto with the bolts still present in the sheets,
except for the first and last signatures. The former held the h.t. and the
t.p.; the latter the end of the text. One explanation for that is certainly
that the sheet was folded vertically. When it was separated, the bolts would
have, of course, been cut. But, from an efficiency point of view, that
folding in that situation makes some sense. The sheets could be folded and
separated at the end, rather than being cut before folding or after only
one folding. With one slice, the h.t. and t.p. are separted from the text
pages.