Recent Projects

These are two books I have treated recently in the lab. Unfortunately, I got ahead of myself with these books and did not take before images.
This book was a half leather reback. The text block was a group of pamphlets sewn together and one section was exceptionally brittle. Initially, I tried to tip in the loose pages of this section with paste, but it was unsuccessful. It had to be removed from the group, washed and deacidified,  then guarded and resewn into the text block.

After the text block was repaired, I repaired the case and reattached it as seen in my previous entries. This is the completed book.

This book originally had fake raised bands, so I decided to mimic that when I rebacked it. Before cleaning and lining the spine, I made a template of the band positions. To make the fake raised bands, I glued two pieces of leather together and cut them into strips of the appropriate size. Then, using the template, I positioned the strips on the new spine stiffener. This was good practice, but because the leather was rotting 19th century leather, nothing was gained by saving the spine pieces. This process should be reserved for either better quality leather or a more valuable book. This was the end result.