1566 Table Talk or Tischreden by Martin Luther.

Full Panel tooled

Closeup of tooled cover.

Headbands sewn and blended in.

Paring Leather

Tying up to form spine

Untooled

Page repair in progress. The filled in text at bottom right is from an earlier repair (one of the good ones.)

Newly washed and sized sheets drying

Mending and headbands complete, and lining up spine before applying the new leather.

Currently on our bench is a 1566 copy of Martin Luther's Table Talk. It was in a later case with a number of interesting repairs: some good, some bad. The first and last leaves were pulled, washed, resized, and mended before reattaching to the textblock. Headbands were sewn in period style and new boards cut and beveled. Bound in calf, it was tooled in blind: designs pressed or rolled into the leather with no gold. This was a common style of decoration, gold not in common use for perhaps another 100 years.