Marbled madness

Recently, I purchased a stack of antique books at the winter warehouse sale of the Friends of Cincinnati's library. I kept my focus on the grungiest and largest books in the "collectibles" section, and found some of my favorites: atlases, cyclopedias, engineering manuals. They are chock full of wonderful illustrations, diagrams, etc.

For me, a wonderful bonus in such books is the endpapers - the pages at the front and back of a book. Antique books frequently had marbled endpapers, which I use often in collages (if you are thinking of pitching old books, let me know if they have cool endpapers, because I'm always looking for more). Here's a peek at three of the endpapers I found, and below them, a few images that show how endpapers have been used in my collages …

From "The Living World," Samuel Walker & Co. (1880) 

From "The Century Dictionary & Encyclopedia, Vol X:
The Century Atlas of the World" (1904)

From "Engineering: An Illustrated Weekly Journal,
Vol. CXXXVII - Jan.-June 1934." London.

In "Plate 25," the endpaper serves as a table cloth.

The entire foreground of "Take Me Away:1"
and "Take Me Away: 2" is an endpaper
 from a 1920s edition of "Pinocchio."

"Classic 14-Layer Marble Cake" is a tower of marbled
papers, half of which are endpapers.