Restorations

One of the largest I’ve seen, this battered beauty survived the past century only to be caught in a house fire. Unlike its companion whose cover was charred beyond redemption, this one merely lost its spine and sustained some soot and smoke damage. Some of the pages were torn and tattered, and the sewing had begun to fail in the first third of the book. I stripped it down, repaired the paper as needed and reattached the loose signatures, strengthening the spine in the process. The spine was lined with muslin for additional stability and to form a strong hinge. After consolidating the cover leather where it was suffering from red rot and cleaning it to remove the soot, I reassembled it with a new spine and cased the book back in. A few more cover repairs and some leather toning and treatment, and this grandiose old Bible shines with all its former splendor.

This 160 year old compilation of Shakespeare’s works came to me in fairly sound condition, just missing most of the spine and a little scuffed and battered. The client wanted a new spine put on the book and labeled with gold-tooled titling, and the general wear and tear retouched as much as possible without taking away from the age and authenticity of the book.

I found this broken down beauty in a used bookstore just crying out for restoration and couldn’t resist picking it up for my personal collection. 145 years old, this huge Bible had seen a lot of wear and tear. Somewhere in the past century it migrated through the midwest, picking up newspaper clippings and losing a spine. Probably used mostly for display, the outer surface of the leather was worn almost completely away on the back cover from years of sitting on a table and being scooted from place to place. The leather on the edges had cracked, allowing moisture to seep in and warp the boards, popping them apart. Without a spine, the exposed stitching began to fail and the loose signatures took a beating. Something about the book’s history and former loveliness called to me, though, and hours of restoration later I can see why.

Another gorgeous leather book just waiting for its former beauty to be restored, this 163 year old binding of the Pilgrim’s Progress was mostly suffering from typical problems: deteriorated leather, worn joints, cracked inner hinges and bumped corners. With some leather restoration, new period-appropriate endsheets, and strengthened corners, the book looks beautiful while still gracefully displaying its age and is structurally sound enough to last another hundred years.

This once-beautiful 134 year old copy of Haydn’s dictionary of dates had fallen into sad disrepair. Both covers were completely detached, the spine was cracked, worn, and missing pieces, and at some point in its lifetime someone had attempted to reattach the covers with a few strips of tape, further marring the leather. I wanted to preserve as much of the ornate original binding as possible, so I chose to strengthen the text block and reback it in matching leather, attaching the old covers and using the old spine as a label.

A client’s childhood Bible had a dry rotted leather cover and loose, insect damaged pages. They requested a new leather cover and minimal, stabilizing repairs to the pages so the text could be sewn back together.