Training and Experience Some Bookbindings and Books Repaired

CN Bibliographic No 2 Church House Church Lane Ledbury Herefordshire HR8 1DP www.CNBibliographic.co.uk books@CNBibliographic.co.uk 01 531 634138 Editing|Proofreading|Publishing|Book Design|Typesetting|Bookbinding| raining and Experience TIn 1972 or 1973, not being able to afford more than a few leatherbound books, an evening class in bookbinding at Twickenham College of Technology indicated the way ahead clearly enough. Continuing with classes one evening a week at the London College of Printing for the years remaining in London to 1979, com- pleted the basic training in traditional bookbinding. Evening classes were taken up again at the LCP in 2001 (now the London College of Communication, and part of the University of the Arts, London), followed by the excellent and thorough-going courses on repair and ne binding run by Kathy Abbott at the City Lit, together with those on gold tooling given by Tracey Rowledge, also thoroughly worth while. ome Bookbindings and Books repaired: SThe books illustrated below are all repairs or rebindings. Bookbinding is somewhat labour- intensive so when a book falls apart, it may be cheaper to buy another or to find a better copy in the second-hand or antiquarian book market. While the basic function of a binding is to protect the text, it may be a significant artefact in its own right and have value in that respect, or the book might be scarce, or have some powerful association attached to it, and therefore be worth repairing or rebind- ing. Family Bibles and treasured copies of Mrs. Beeton are usually worth doing. Repair may range from a simple tidy-up, to a re-back process, or possibly, a new binding. Good conservation practice usually means doing as little as possible consistent with putting the book into good usable repair; so one approach might be to leave it alone and make a box to keep it in. Each book needs to be assessed, and the work to be done determined. Royal Commission on Historic Monuments – Herefordshire The three volumes of RCHM for Herefordshire had seen extensive reference in an architect’s office, and the usual wear and tear was evident: spines worn and rubbed at head and tail, boards close to falling off. Repair consisted of re-attaching the boards independently of the covering cloth, inserting a new piece of spine cloth, trimming and re-attaching the original spine cloth.

A Gaelic Bible This bible was inscribed with the owners name, the place Lochaber, and dates of 1839 and 1859. Since then, it had come down in the family, and been to Canada and back. Published in 1828 by The British and Foreign Bible Society, bound in thin dark tan leather, embossed with a design on the covers, but with no titling on the spine as far as we could see. Over the years, the leather had become blackened with use, and well worn round the edges, and the base of the spine was missing. Several pages were loose and the list of Books of the Bible was lost, together with the first two chapters of Genesis. The missing pages were reproduced by typesetting and printing the Gaelic text (electronically) and sewing them back in.

A new leather cover was fitted to the original boards, and the original cover replaced on top of that. You can see that it’s been repaired, but retaining as much as possible of the original. Serviceable for another two hundred odd years.

The owner of the Bible commissioned a box to keep it in, beautifully made in walnut and inlaid with saddleback sycamore, the design reminiscent of the St. Andrew cross:

Intarsia and Marquetry A full re-binding of a craftsmens’ handbook on the the subject of marquetry and intarsia, the art of decoration of wooden surfaces by in-laying veneer, particularly as practised in Italy. Obviously, the design of the binding called for an inlay of veneer into the covering leather, rather than an inlay of different coloured leathers. The rather ambitious first design, however, was undermined, not so much by the difficulty of inlaying veneer in leather, but by the beauty of the figure in the leather itself, which can just about be seen in the photographs. The front board ended up with just two lozenges arranged within a simple blind-tooled diaper pattern. Laying veneer within leather is more difficult than laying it in a wooden surface, since it has to be assembled, sanded and polished prior to placing it.

The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland A cherished volume more or less in tatters, showing evidence of having been stuck together with sellotape (never do that — it can be impossible to remove the brown staining):

A book of Poetry A traditional half-leather binding of a book of poetry, originally a paper back:

Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management The 1869 edition:

The Gunpowder–Treason History of the Gunpowder Plot. A calfbound book dated 1676, actually two books bound into one. Books of this age are difficult to repair because the leather is stuck directly to the back of the pages making it next to impossible to introduce new leather underneath the old. In this case, it was easier because the spine leather was so far gone as to be not worth conserving. Although the original tooling on the spine panels was almost discernible, it was decided just to re-back with a new piece of calf and leave it untooled. The title label was long lost, so a plain green label lettered in gold leaf was considered a reasonably suitable replacement.

The Bridstow Ringers Visitors Book An ordinary notebook that had been in the tower since 1924 — it had acquired character which simply had to be preserved. The yellow tape was removed and a new red cloth spine fitted, but oth- erwise the existing cover paper was consolidated.

A Leatherbound Case for a Kindle A simple box for a Kindle, covered in dark red Nigerian goatskin.