Before

After

The Objective of the book restorer is to make damaged books usable again, at the same time though, every care must be taken to restore them back to their original condition, at least as near as possible.

To achieve this the binder needs considerable knowledge of book constructions through vast periods of time, and tools and materials that mirror these changes in design. This is not an easy task, while the knowledge can be obtained through study, the practical experience, enough to be competent, can be years in the making. As for the tools and materials, which can be incredibly hard to find, there is also considerable experience incurred to do this commercially.

However, assuming everything is in place for restoration to begin, we will look at some of the techniques and problems a book restorer will encounter.

Initial examination is very important, because from this, the binder can determine what will be required for both the dismantling of the original binding and the subsequent restoration of the book. The removal of the old binding is done with ultimate care and attention because all, or as much as possible will be saved and reused, this is true whether the book be an eighteenth century leather binding or a latter cloth bound book. Next, the sewing is examined to see that it’s still sound, if any sections need to be sewn (usually the first and last) it is done at this point. Also any page repair is done as well using a variety of tissues and paper fibers. The endpapers are the next consideration, if all the fly leaves and paste downs on the boards are intact, we only need to add paper or linen joints that will form the “inside hinge” of the book. If new endpapers are required we should try to match the period of the books with the paper. This will be the first of many illustrations of how difficult it can be to find the right materials to the uninitiated.

The amount and type of linings on the spine are very important. This can range from none at all if the book was a “tight back” binding, to a “hollow back” spine, to simple linen and paper linings for a cloth case binding. The handbands are also replaced at this point if the original cannot be saved. These can be sewn on using colored threads and silk or glued on using ready made products.

The original boards need to be prepared to take their place back on the book. This can also entail a variety of operations, most notably lifting the old cover material (be it leather or cloth) enough to let the spine covering underneath it, so as to join the spine and boards together again. The endpaper paste down on the other side of the boards are also lifted to allow our paper joints, or “inside hinges” to do the same. The new spine material may have to be dyed to match an older binding, this takes great skill and patience and almost a “sixth sense” as to what one material will look like when a particular color is washed over it.

Having put our cover back on as one piece we now have to glue down the material we lifted on top and underneath of the original boards, and turn our attention to the spine. If we managed to lift the original from the binding, it now must be freed of any old spine linings, and the edges straightened and pared down if it was a leather book. The old spine is then pasted on to the new one. This is where a good color match when dying the new spine will help conceal just how much repair and restoration went into the volume, after all, this is our end goal to make the book look as undisturbed as possible.

Should the original spine be missing or part missing we may have to tool it, again in the same period as the original binding. This could span centuries of time, and as I mentioned before this is another area that makes a bindery so hard to equip.

But tool it we will, using old type faces if possible as well as gilt and blind tooling to match. Some minor cleaning and preservation may complete your restoration project.

This is a very brief look at the some of the techniques used in book repair and restoration. There are countless other challenges that may present themselves: paper repair and deacidification, for instance, can take far longer than the repair to the binding itself; and completely resewing a book can add many hours to the project before binding ever gets started. But once these skills have been acquired and put into practice, it will only further the satisfaction gained from this age old trade.