Miniature Books published in Kingsport, Tennessee

At only 9/16" x 3/4" (19x14mm) these are the smallest books we've worked on. They were published by the Training Division of the Kingsport Press in Tennessee and came with a brass bookshelf, two covers brittle and detached and one cover missing. They're real books (142 pages for George Washington) with leather turned in and gold tooling.  We made new leather covers of morocco pared paper thin and laid original parts over for two, tooling the third. The titles are Extracts from the Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, 1930; Washington, His Farewell Address, 1932; Addresses of Abraham Lincoln, 1929. The last picture puts them in context with a somewhat large book also on the bench: Hayden's Geographical and Geological Atlas of Colorado. 27" high by 20.5" wide.

1776 Journals of Congress

 An interesting project that just crossed our bench; an original printing of the Journals of Congress for 1776. Cased in library buckram, it was well preserved but not very attractive. A little strengthening, new endpapers of a similar handmade paper, a little airbrushing for tone, and a binding chosen by the client, a dealer in rare books.

Reproduction Endpapers For Sale

Though hand marbled papers are readily available for restoration work, printed endpapers appropriate for late 19th to early 20th century work have been impossible to find. A small angling collection here for restoration finally brought the matter to a head. An 1884 Denver printing of "With Rod and Line in Colorado Waters" had decorative endsheets too brittle and cracked to be reused, and so we've launched a line of appropriate papers.

They feature small repetitive patterns in a single color, currently available in brown, green and a golden wheat. They're easily aged by immersion or airbrush, have a vellum finish that is a very good match for machine-made papers, and are printed on a Mohawk Ivory 70# text.

We hope to make them more readily available through some of the large suppliers, but meanwhile you can get them from us at $6.90 a sheet, 19" by 25" short grain. Inquire for quantity pricing and shipping costs (zipcode dependent).

bob@gildedleafbindery.com
865-621-7923

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.

Paradise Lost & Found

1688 Edition with new label and outer joint repairs

Laced in and ready for leather

Tucking in a new inner joint

Drying after aging

Mended sections

An archival scanner

New frontis portrait

"Unaged" facsimile on right

Newly sewn textblock, after mending and adding in the missing plates

We've just completed restoration of 1688 and 1691 small folio editions of Paradise Lost, a complete first illustrated edition and a later printing missing the frontis portrait and most of the 12 plates that preface each "book". The 1688 edition needed only minor repairs but provided the source for our missing plates. We used a unique scanner where the book is hung over the edge, allowing us to capture deep into the inner margin without putting any stress on the binding. The scans were digitally cleaned, output on hand-made paper, airbrushed to lightly age, and sewn along with the newly mended text. Though heavily worn, we reused the original boards of the 1691 copy with their marbled paper sides, simply lifting the paper and inserting new leather for the spine underneath. The 1688 edition needed a new label and strengthening of both inner and outer joints.

Literary Reconstruction

I've begun working on an important collection of several 17th and 18th century poets, or at least their literary remains. Currently on the bench are two 1674 editions of George Herbert's "The Temple" and a 1720 2-volume quarto edition of the poetical works of John Milton. A partially disbound copy of "The Temple" was pulled, mended, resewn, bound, and tooled in the photos above. A second copy needing no text repair was rebound in dark calf, the last picture above. (Pictured lying on "Walton's Lives", in for a reattachment of its boards. The Milton volumes below need new spines, having been rebacked in weak sheepskin sometime last century, those weak joints finally splitting apart. The original headbands were gone, having been replaced with a thick cord tucked into the headcap, so they're being resewn in the photos posted here. The new headbands will be age-toned to match their respective edges (top edges are usually dirtier than bottom) and will go unnoticed (as they should) when the new leather has been worked on. A cloth inner joint was visible and machine-made pastedowns had just been applied over the originals, so those layers were removed all the way back to the original leather turnins. The original leather has been treated with a consolidant, all later materials eliminated, and labels saved in case they're worth reusing. (That'll be decided when new leather is in place and the final results can better be anticipated.) More pics as we progress!

Bookbinding and Bytes

Visitors to our shop say it looks like something out of a movie or a Dickens novel: browns and blacks, old books and cast-iron machinery, the smell of leather and book dust. Most of our work is done the old-fashioned way using tools and techniques that Charles Dickens could have described. Not because we're distrustful of the new and shiny; there's simply no other way to do the careful sorts of work required by restoration and fine binding. Occasionally, a new tool comes along that becomes an important addition to our shop. In this case, it even uses electricity. Welcome the computer!

This important early edition of a Madame Curie work arrived in its original paper wraps with portions of the spine and covers missing. We scanned the covers, used digital magic to fill in the missing portions, and output on a similar paper. Finally, a perfect color match was achieved with the airbrush (another modern tool). Preserving Yesterday's Treasures with Today's Technology... sounds like an ad agency blurb, but in this case it's true!