Sermons on Job

Outside cover tooled very simply in blind.

Jen painting the inner wood panels

Cutting flowers

Leather borders on and adding leather onlays. The flowers are first tooled in gold, very thin leather applied over the gold, and then tooled again in blind and then gold.

Leather onlays tooled

Front Panel finished and inset into front board. Turn-ins tooled in gold.

The finished rear panel

Rear panel inset into rear board, turn-ins tooled in gold.

Rear panel again

Closeup of rear panel.

We've just finished a copy of John Calvin's Sermons on Job, a facsimile of the 1574 folio edition published by Banner of Truth Trust. The Tennessee Association of Craft Artists has teamed me with Nashville book artist Jennifer Mcquistion for a Master/Apprentice program and this is one of our projects. We've bound the book in alum-tawed leather over raised bands and tooled the outside very simply in blind. Jen does wood burning and painting and she created the wood panels that were laid into a recessed panel on the inside of each cover. A black leather border was added to the paintings and then I've added floral leather onlays in white and red and many hours of gold tooling to fill in. It's currently in the Tennessee Arts Commission gallery in Nashville for a September-November show.

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.

iPads Finely Bound

We've been working on several designs for iPad cases: a "Full" and a "Slim". They are made to look and feel like a fine antique book with raised bands, gold tooling and sumptuous materials. The Full features a hardwood frame slotted for access to ports and switches, with a slideout tray underneath for storing earphones, cords, stylus, etc. It's the size of a large book and (compared to the iPad) fairly bulky.

The Slim is no larger than many iPad cases on the market but beautifully made of fine leathers and handmarbled papers.

At present (meaning until we get a large order from StuffMart and farm it all out to China), every case is built to order, with a variety of woods, leathers, and decorative papers available. The two pictured feature deep brown morocco leather spines and corners, the Slim's leather tray fashioned from olive-colored kangaroo. They can be titled however desired, personalized with name, company, or ostensibly clever phrases like "Luddite's Revenge" pictured above.

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!

Speaking of bookbinding....

I enjoyed a visit to Nashville last weekend, giving a lecture on bookbinding at their public library's Special Collections Center. With 3 librarians and a number of book artists in attendance, it was a lively crowd, and the hour-and-a-half went by quickly. We talked about a variety of techniques, the future of the book, the demise of trade binderies and apprenticeships and the sad effect on quality, and even covered (briefly) the advertised topics!

An Unusual Ledger Construction

Some years ago I happened on several rolls of a canvas-backed slitted paper in a bankrupt bindery in North Dakota. They had at one time made large ledgers for county records, and while hauling away a treasure trove of tools, I saved a few of their ledgers and the rolls of material.

This past month, a ledger arrived for repair that used this now unusual method; the cloth being folded into a continuous Z and each section being sewn to the peaks. It's an interesting way to solve a real problem: how to make a strong flexible binding that will open ALL the way to the fold. I have "Portland Guard" stuck in my head as the name of the hinge material, but would love to hear from anyone that can tell me more! The pictures show a view from the spine, an intact ledger opened, the "Portland Guard" unrolled, and a view of what remains of the spine after the sections have been removed for mending.

Cook's Voyages

Half the fun in the restoration business is working on great books few of us ever get to see. These photos are of a 1779 2-volume edition of Captain James Cook's "Voyage toward the South Pole, and around the World. Performed in His Majesty's Ships The Resolution and Adventure." The textblocks were fairly tight, though some fold-out maps needed mending. New headbands were sewn over round cores and the whole rebound in sprinkled calf. I'm trying out new calf, still searching for a replacement of Pearce's inimitable (and no longer available) vegetable-tanned calf. This is from Franz Hoffman in Germany and tooled very nicely, though it wasn't fun at all to pare. (The animal is a little older and the hide much tougher.)

Flowers Personified: A Leather Rebacking

The hand-colored title page and a closeup of new leather turn-ins.

Cloth joints oversewn and a picture of the detached spine The close-up shows new leather worked under old and new headcaps formed, prior to color touchup and blending..


Close-ups of the reattached spine, with new leather running from the reattached spine to the triple gold lines.

"Flowers Personified" is an unusually beautiful volume, handcolored throughout "with 52 female figures adorned with flower costumes." The textblock was in very good condition but, as is typical with books of this period (mid 19th century), there was virtually nothing holding the boards on beyond the thin covering leather and paper inner joints. As a result, both spine and boards were detached.

After cleaning the back of the textblock, linen joints were oversewn. This is a somewhat invasive procedure, but is at times invaluable for catching up loose sections front and back and for providing solid support across the joints. (The debate can rage on in the comments if you like.) To finish preparation of the textblock, the spine was relined with a new hollow.

The leather on the boards was lifted (you can see the cut right next to the three gold lines) and matching black morocco was worked around the spine and underneath the original sides. The original spine was cleaned from the backside (extra layers of lining material removed), headcap areas were thinned, and then it was laid back over the new spine. New leather was blended with the old and though the camera flash is merciless, the repairs are fairly invisible to the untrained eye. This type of rebacking is perhaps the most common "surgery" performed by book doctors, and similar techniques are used for clothbound books.

Gold Foil: Imitation or Genuine?

If you've been at the craft for very long, chances are you've picked up a few unidentified rolls of gold foil. Cloth bindings aren't very particular; they like cheap foil as much as the real thing. If you use imitation gold on leather, however, it doesn't take very long before the fake gold loses its luster and turns a corroded green.

In February, I took a box of unidentified foil and stamped a sample card with each one. In just a few months, I had proof of which foils were imitation and, as an added bonus, had a sample card to help choose between different shades of the real stuff. In the picture, stamps 1 through A are from February, with 1, 6, 7 & 8 being fake. The photo doesn't really capture this well. The imitation foils are now black, which can be rubbed off with a thumbnail to reveal a dull metallic underneath. The genuine foil is bright and crisp and with a variety of shades from almost white through a reddish-orange tint.

I tested a second batch (B-H) on December 16th. C and H look dark in the photo, but that's just from the flash. Pretty slow and very low tech, but time reveals true character! (Insert wise proverb here...)