When printing our books we use high quality offset inks from the German manufacturer Huber. These are four CMYK colors and additional “gold” pantone. This color is used to decorate the bottom of the page and some elements that need to be highlighted and emphasized separately – for example, titles of sections in the table of contents. Pantone is a standardized color matching system developed by the American company Pantone Inc. Each year this company proclaims one of the colors as the “Color of the Year”.
The abbreviation CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, blacK) stands for the names of colors - cyan, magenta and yellow (blue, purple, yellow) with black as the fourth color. CMYK is a subtractive color scheme used primarily in the printing industry.
The highlight of the books of the Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the World Collections series is gold spattering on the upper, side and lower sections of the book block. This is called “gilding the edge of the book block” – a technique that instantly gives printed products an attractive and expensive look.
Previously, the most important books in luxurious leather bindings were decorated this way. Then, real sheet gold was used for gilding. To reduce the cost of production, only the upper edge of the book was gilded, which was visible when the book was on the shelf. All the works were done manually, using homemade tools.
Today, technology has not changed much. Gilding serves two purposes: firstly, it serves as a decoration of the book, and secondly, and more importantly, gold coating protects the book from the harmful environmental impacts - acidity, dust and moisture.
The edge gilding of our books is done before the binding process. Firstly, this avoids damage and contamination of the cover, and secondly, it will help not interfere with working with the paper block.
There are several types of gilding - using foil or paints. Our books are given the gold radiance with the help of paints. After special grinding in a milling machine, paint is applied to the book, followed by a layer of special hardener so that gold dust does not remain on the fingers.
