Recent Activities

It surprises me today, the last day of March, to see that this is my first blog post of the year! A bit embarrassing. Obviously I need to find some new interesting things to write about. At the moment, though, I came here to update the sidebar with a new list of upcoming workshops.

I taught several classes this winter which kept me busy; let's say that is the reason I have been neglecting my blog. So, I will show you some photos of the work my students have been doing.

The season began with a Turkish marbling workshop weekend. These are always fun and very satisfying because in a short time students can achieve some really wonderful results.

I did another weekend workshop on book repair. Each student started with an old book that needed a new cover so the old covers were removed, individual problems were addressed for each book, then a little rebacking, new case construction, new endsheets, etc. A few minor book repair issues were also addressed for other books brought in by the students. Turned out to be a really fun workshop.

I also taught two longer courses: Bookbinding 1 and Bookbinding 2. The first one was four weeks and aimed at people with no previous bookbinding experience. A lot can be learned in four weeks, though, and each student made six different books. Here is some of their work:

The Bookbinding 2 class was five weeks long and it was for students who had already done some binding and wanted to learn some more advanced techniques. Each student made three books: a single-section 3-piece binding with beveled boards and an inset label, an exposed binding sewn on raised cords using a sewing frame, and then we spent most of our time doing a quarter leather, split-board binding with sewn headbands.

The little books, repaired

Last month, I mentioned that I had been asked to repair a set of old books, and then I left everyone hanging, wondering what had become of them! Well, I finished them before the holidays, and now I'll finally tell you more about it.

It was a thirteen-volume set of Shakespeare's work, called the Handy Volume Shakespeare. The books were very small, thin paper, etc. As can be gleaned from a little online research, it seems there must have been many, many of these sets produced over a period of a few years around the turn of the century (although this edition was undated so I don't know exactly when it was printed). This particular set must have been very well used since the spines were badly cracked or missing, some band-aid repairs had been done in the past, and the covers were just disintegrating in my hands when I tried to work with them.

The main objective of this project was to make new covers for the books, and make the set functional once again.

As I said, there had been some attempts at repair and I found some of the covers stuck on with cellophane tape (gasp!), and there were a few loose pages that were taped as well.

I even found one page taped, and reinforced, with reinforcements!

It was an interesting adventure to poke through each little book. There were some random surprises, like little notes, a bit of ribbon, some other little inclusions, a bit of marginalia, etc.

After the covers were removed, I cleaned the gunk and old cover material off the spines. I used wheat paste to soften the old glue and cleaned them as well as I could.

As it turns out, the bindings were very much intact and I didn't have to resew any of them (thank goodness). This is how they looked after that messy spine cleaning part was finished.

Before I started working on the new covers, there were a few loose sheets that I had to tip in. A couple of those pages needed to have holes filled, like this one, where I added paper to the corner area before tipping it in.

So, surprisingly (or maybe not), making and attaching the new covers turned out to be the easiest part of this project. We decided to go with brown leather and paper spine labels, in an attempt at keeping their appearance in line with their age - and this is how they looked when I was done:

They were successfully finished and delivered before the holidays to be given to some lucky theatre student as a Christmas present. Hopefully they will be well used for another hundred years.

Additional photos that were taken for this project can be seen in an album on my Facebook page if you're interested: www.facebook.com

Repairing some little books

This is what I started with last week. It's a set of 13 small books. Old, falling apart, dirty, uggh. The project is now well underway. They will have new covers and look fabulous in a few days!

Book Doctor

So I'm at PBI (although my luggage took the scenic route and arrived two days later than I did). One of the classes I have been taking is book repair with Ann Frellsen. The focus has been on quick treatments for damaged books, so that they will withstand continued use (in other words, not for rare or ancient books requiring specailized detailed treatments).

We used Japanese tissue to repair holes in pages and to reattach a page that has been cut out. We also did tipping in of pages, endpaper replacement, spine replacement, end cap reinforcement, and all sorts of other things in between. She was very good at showing us what needed to be done for each of the books we were working on since they are all different and some required treatments that others did not. These are not very exciting things to photograph since the finished work is not very obvious - or it shouldn't be very obvious!

One book that I worked on was this lovely orange book.
[Edit May 30]
The most obvious problem with this book was the dirt as it had been stored in a very dusty area for a long time. The photos I had here originally didn't really convey the magnitude of the cleaning that was involved so I've removed those in favor of this one that just shows a closer view. The front cover (on the right) and part of the spine have been cleaned. There were some little pen marks, scratches, and stains that didn't change, but the overall dirt layer has been removed. The back cover (left) hasn't been cleaned. Click on the photo to make it bigger if you want to see more detail.


[end Edit]

Also with this book, I reinforced the head cap, cleaned old adhesive from the textblock spine then re-rounded and backed it. The hinges of the case were weak, so they were reinforced and then new endpapers were attached and the whole thing was put back together.
Pretty exciting, eh?

The Big Bible Repair

This gigantic Bible recently appeared in my studio. As you can see, it is in three pieces. I do not do much book repair because I find it hard on my nerves; however, this belongs to a church and the people seeking its repair are friends of my family... so I agreed to tackle it. The actual publication date is unknown but it was likely purchased in 1927 based on an inscription on the inside.


When it arrived, I was very happy to see that the sewing was entirely sound. Phew. To resew this sort of thing, I would require direct word from God before I would even consider it. Reattaching the first few pages and the cover, I could probably handle.

The first few pages were easy to reattach. The pages were whipped-stitched together; they were loose sheets rather than a folded section, and I think it was originally just tipped in. So I tipped it in again. Then I cooked up some paste and started working on reattaching the cover. I couldn't find any material to really match the Bible's original cover. I picked up some strong black cloth and made myself a piece of bookcloth to use - not a great match but it worked. I lifted the cover material along the spine edge of the front cover, and along the edge of the spine and worked my book cloth under the original covering so only a narrow strip of the new material is actually visible.


I also used some linen repair tape on the inside and was able to cover it up with some of the original paper used in the Bible so the repair tape isn't visible at all. Now that it is finished, the Bible does seem to be better then when I started.


There was an interesting tidbit tucked inside this Bible. This small piece of paper was obviously included when the Bible was originally purchased and explains how to properly open a book. Quite right too, perhaps this instructional bit should be included with books more often.

Book Repair

Book repair is something I haven't focused on very much. A bunch of years ago, I did some book repair in a class with Joe Landry; since then, it hasn't come up too often. But a friend of mine asked if I could fix this book for her daughter. The textblock was intact, so I didn't have to sew it. The hinge area of both covers was torn so the spine part of the cover was almost entirely detached.

Before
So I replaced the spine part of the cover and used book cloth to cover the spine. I used some Japanese repair paper on the inside of the hinge areas as you can see in this close up photo. Then I covered up that stuff with some new pasted endpapers.


I think I should have attempted to get the book cloth in between the paper and board...rather than pasting it on top of the cover paper. That would have solved the issue of covering up part of the title on the front cover. But when I tried to separate the paper and the board on the covers it was just tearing too easily. I think there were a couple issues: the paper on the covers of this book is brittle, likely low grade, maybe acidic... and I was probably using the wrong tools for the job since I haven't acquired tools for this kind of work, making me "all thumbs" while doing this.

After