Maisie Matilda, a 24-year-old artist from the UK, is being credited for shining a bright spotlight on the fascinating but dying art of book fore-edge painting. Matilda had been painting for a long time, but she only started experimenting with fore-edge painting during the first COVID-19 lockdown, when she found herself with lots of time on her hands. The self-taught artist went viral at the end of 2021, after posting videos of her work on the fore-edge of a J.R.R. Tolkien book on social media. Her TikTok videos got millions of views, and the young artist found herself giving interviews to some of the world’s largest news outlets. She has been riding this wave ever since, and she currently has over half a million loyal fans on Instagram alone.

Photo: Maisie Matilda

Fore-edge painting can be traced back all the way to the 10th century when symbolic designs were used mainly for identification purposes, but it evolved into a fully-fledged art form during the 18th century. Unfortunately, the craft is listed as critically endangered, with only four “craftspeople currently known” to be working in the field all over the world, which only makes Maisie’s art that much more important to preserve the vanishing art.

Photo: Maisie Matilda

“I have always loved Tolkien’s books and his illustrations, so it was a perfect combination of Art History, painting, and Tolkien,” Maisie Matilda told BuzzFeed about her beginnings as a fore-edge painter.

Photo: Maisie Matilda

“My most recent painting of the Lord of the Rings took me just a morning,” the young artist added. “When I really focus, I am a quick painter, even though I love to go into painfully small detail with some very tiny paintbrushes. It usually takes me half a day or so, as I have been painting for a long time, and the more I do it, the more confident I become with my mark-making.”

Photo: Maisie Matilda

Maisie’s creative process starts with finding the right book, which is a pretty important part, as she gets her inspiration from the books she paints. Then comes the repair work, if the book needs it, before using two clamps to press the pages together and create a canvas out of the fore-edge. The English artist then uses fine brushes to paint scenery, characters, or symbols out of the book she is working on.

 

According to Buzz Feed, Maisie sells the books she paints on her Etsy shop for anywhere between $90 and $1,300, but that info is 3 years old, and inflation may have bumped those prices up a bit if you’re interested. They usually sell out within minutes, so, good luck!