One frequently encounters in older books a very fragile piece of tissue paper that usually is set opposite a plate--i.e., an illustration, photograph, etc. This tissue guard was bound (sometimes tipped in or laid in) to the book to prevent the plate from offsetting to the opposite (usually printed) page (and vice versa), as seen in the 1901 edition of Jane Eyre depicted below:
Not all tissue guards were plain (as above). Oft times a caption for the underlying plate was printed directly on a tissue guard.
As publishers switched over from rag paper to pulp in the mid-to-late 19th century, the acidity of some tissue guards caused the tissue guards themselves to offset against the pages they were inserted to protect (the offset portion of an affected page looks darker than the rest of the page).
One sometimes encounters an older title where a tissue guard has become stuck to an underlying page. Great care has to be exercised in attempting to remedy such a situation, lest the ink from the page underlying the tissue guard adhere to the tissue guard when you attempt to remove it. For more expensive titles, this is a task which should be left to professional conservators....
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