Endpaper

The endpapers or end-papers of a book (also known as the endsheets) are the pages that consist of a double-size sheet folded, with one half pasted against an inside cover (the pastedown), and the other serving as the first free page (the free endpaper or flyleaf).

Before mass printing in the 20th century, it was common for the endpapers of books to have paper marbling.

[3] The cloth holds the stitches and prevents the paper from perforating and tearing.

[4] Combined and Universal Endsheets are loaded into the cover feeder of an automatic perfect binder and attached – instead of the soft cover – automatically, producing a book block reinforced from head to tail.

The Folded Tabbed End sheet is collated with the text pages, milled and bound along with the book block.

Different types of endpapers, Landesbibliothek Oldenburg (Germany).
Stockholm 1777
Marbled endpaper from Die Nachfolge Christi ed. Ludwig Donin (Vienna ca. 1875).
Handcrafted marbled endpapers of a book manually bound in France around 1880 (Giacomo Leopardi, Œuvres, vol. 2).
Endpapers of the original run of books in the Everyman's Library , 1906, based on the art of William Morris 's Kelmscott Press.