Fore-edge painting was quite popular in the past. When exploring antique book shops, you probably saw more than a few books adorned with beautiful illustrations on the edges of their pages.
While it is often perceived as a dying art form, there are more than a few artists who are making efforts to bring back fore-edge painting to relevance. One of them is TikTok user Maisie Jackson.
Jackson is known for her viral TikTok videos in which she showcases her fore-edge painting projects. This art history student can be seen decorating books belonging to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series or J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy with scenes and motifs contained in these literary masterpieces.
Jackson is an avid painter but only started doing fore-edge paintings a couple of years ago as a creative challenge. She posted some of her works on TikTok, and they quickly went viral, encouraging her to continue with the project.
While Jackson doesn’t shy away from tackling all sorts of authors and books, she admits that she enjoys most the works of Tolkien.
“Tolkien works best for me, as I was always predominantly a landscape painter, and Middle Earth is full of an amazing variety of landscape; mountains, forests, rivers and beautiful architectural concepts,” Jackson shared in one of her interviews.
You can check out more of Jackson’s fore-edge painting works below.
