Book collectors frequently confuse two terms that appear with some frequency in auction and booksellers' catalogs. Inlays are pieces of leather, paper, cloth or a similar binding material that are to cut to fit into a pre-cut space in other material that is attached to the underlying boards, while onlays are materials that adhere directly to the overall binding material. In actuality, it often is difficult for the unpracticed eye to tell the two apart.
In the examples below, via the University of Miami, the example on the left has a tan central leather inlay to its upper cover of brown morocco leather, while the example on the right sports a dark brown and black leather onlay of a violin set amongst tan morocco leather:
In the example below, a commissioned binding executed for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek by Jean Gunner, the leather onlays grace a binding that is otherwise dark greyish-blue morocco:
The binder in this example, Marky Miles, has executed the design as inlays of multicolored goat skin in an overall binding of dark green goat skin:
As noted previously, inlays and onlays also may be made of materials that differ from the materials into which they are set or upon which they are mounted. For instance: in the example below (via the British Library) a printed paper onlay appears atop a green cloth binding blocked in black:
In the commissioned binding below (via Peter Keisogloff Rare Books), bookbinder Silvia Rennie has used both inlays and onlays to striking effect on a copy of Chaucer's The Pardoner's Tale:
Photos, of course, do not do justice to bindings such as these, which is why we strongly urge attendance at book fairs and other events where it is possible to handle such bindings yourself. Running even a cotton-gloved finger across the surface of such bindings can tell you much that a photo cannot.
We will leave to your imagination the amount of work that The Chelsea Bindery put into the onlays required for this First Edition, First Impression of The Hobbit, currently available from Peter Harrington:
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