Opening an uncut book, with a paper knife. Whoever had checked this out before it was sent to the lab must not have read very much of it because half of the textblock was uncut, and thus unreadable! (Source: http://bookbindingdictionary.com/)
“Treat books gently; for books are kind friends. We benefit by their advice, and they exact no confessions.” Most of this 100+ year old advice is still good! Some of my favorites are: -“Books are not intended for card-racks or for receptacles of botanical specimens.” -“Books should not be toasted before a fire or be […]
Disbinding a damaged book, so that I can resew it and then rebind it. It’s strangely therapeutic and relaxing to take a book apart, I’ve found. Putting it back together is the more stressful part for me.
Edge decoration and marbled endpapers on an 18th century French binding.
More paste paper found on one of our library books. Red, black, and gold paint that’s still shiny!
German paste-paper appreciation post. All of these books were found in my library’s circulating stacks, by the way. I just went down the rows and pulled out the ones that caught my eye, photographed them, and released them back into the wild! 🙂
1970s in the streets, 1870s in the sheets.
Paper curls from cleaning the spine of an old, big book in the conservation lab. I usually start out my spine cleaning by using a special dull knife to scrape away as much of the paper lining as I can, until I get down to the crash/mull/super fabric lining underneath. That’s when I switch to […]
Yup! Peter Verheyen and Donia Conn have written up some great instructions for how to make a German-style springback. Check them out on the Book Arts web! On that same site there’s also instructions for the English-style springback here. I’ve made both types of springbacks, but it’s been so long I don’t really remember which […]
Today I dis-bound this book with a metal cover, so that it can go to the commercial bindery and get a new cover (the cover has gotten rather sharp and has been referred to as a ‘shiv’ by our cataloging department). Don’t worry, we have another pristine copy in special collections! This copy was our […]