Wedding Guest Book for Korean Bride

This wedding guest book for a Korean bride was sewn on double cords laced into boards, top edge gilt, and bound in alum-tawed goatskin with patterned silk sides, handsewn headbands of white and yellow over a round core. It stands upright in a fitted box with ribbon to lift it out and a large compartment for cards and other memorabilia. The box is covered in creme patterned silk with bone closures. Also pictured is the maid of honor (the binder's wife) and our daughter in traditional Korean hanboks

Rebacking a Clothbound book with Leather

Though our usual goal in restoration is to keep the book as original as possible, we'll occasionally take liberties when doing so will make for a better book. In this case, the original spine was missing, and any new cloth spine would, despite careful coloring and aging, have had a difficult time matching perfectly. So, we opted for a complete contrast, choosing a dark leather and tooling in a style reminiscent of the original covers. The boards were split and the leather was tucked between them without disturbing the inner paper joints.

Blue Morocco

11" by 15" springback ledger. Guestbook with several pages of text and 500 blank pages. Bound in blue morocco and tooled in blind and gold.

ESV Study Bible in Dark Brown Morocco

ESV Study Bible rebound in dark brown morocco, leather floral onlays (red and green) on front cover. Cloth inner joints, marbled endpapers, Scripture verse tooled around inner dentelles. "The Delight Of His Eyes" reference is from Ezekiel and is used in describing his wife.

Dragons and Black Leather

Dragons and Black Leather
Here’s a “non-traditional” approach to leather that actually harkens back to the earliest book form. Featuring a wrap-around cover with a leather tie, this modern version in black leather was made for the local Harley Davidson motorcycle shop. Sewn on three linen tapes, it has hard covers, decorative endpapers, a matching top edge, and an inlaid leather dragon. A simpler version with a pre-sewn textblock and simple embossed dragon is also available.

Rebacking Audubon's Quadrupeds

Here's a very nice example of a blind-tooled set from the late 1800's: minimal use of gold on the front cover, with a little more bling around the marbled pastedowns inside. Though we'd often reuse the original spines, this three volume set's were missing or in pieces and it was an easy decision to start fresh. Morocco sides were lifted along a tooled line and new spines were built of matching brown goatskin. The use of simple lines without gold is a great look and aesthetically places this rebound set right back where they started from.

Rebacking a 19th Century half-calf book

Flora Rustica, from the library of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. This is a good example of the rebacking of a 19th century half-calf volume. The boards were detached and portions of the spine were missing. Sometimes (particularly with ornately tooled family Bibles or important publisher's cloth bindings) we'll insert new material under the original and put the old spine right back on. On other occasions, replacing the aged leather is more appropriate. This time, we built new boards with new leather corners and spine, used the original cloth sides and leather spine label, and then tooled the new leather to match the old. The result is a book that looks very much like an immaculately preserved original. Spurgeon's bookplate was, of course, carefully lifted from the original pastedown and reattached.

Of interest to some may be the scrap paper the last binder used to line his boards underneath the cloth. They are the paper covers (wraps) and ads from another natural history volume. I'll often use scrap paper from our printer tray. which I'm sure will make interesting reading for someone in 2110.

Modern Fine Bindings

This ESV Study Bible was commissioned by the publishers. Created as a presentation piece, the goal was simply to use elements of the published design (top photo) while creating something exquisite. It arrived as an uncovered textblock and was bound in heavily grained morocco with beveled and rounded boards, double-core headband in three colors, leather inner joints, and hand marbled endpapers. The lettering design of the spine was taken from the original, as was the use of the triangle as a design element. A marbled triangle is inlaid into the front cover , recessed below the leather, and the triangle theme is repeated in the gold tooling around the inner dentelles. A velvet-lined box was built to house the book and uses black morocco, wooden sides, and matching marbled paper. The publisher's logo is worked into its rounded spine. Several photos of a second copy commissioned at the same time follow.

Aged Headband Cloth

I've found the last bit of a great cloth for making 19th century headbands. (Discontinued by the factory.) It features blue stripes and a stained/aged beige that makes the cloth look 100 years old; a perfect match for many books including family Bibles. It can be more deeply aged if needed, but looks great for many uses as is. It's 100% cotton, thin enough to form neatly over round or square cores (light shirt weight, not bed ticking). A 3" by 45" strip is $7 postpaid; enough for a lot of books. The top picture shows a similar cloth headband still attached with new material behind. The 2nd photo gives a sense of the stained/aged appearance. What's not easily apparent from the photo is that the "white" portions are not just beige, but have soiling and stains as part of the design. It's an unusual cloth; sort of like the ratty jeans so popular among today's callow and unkempt youth. If you'd like a much larger piece to make a pre-soiled filthy new shirt, just let me know. : )

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!

Rebinding a Family Bible

Our usual goal when restoring a family Bible is to reuse the original spine and boards. Repairs are hidden underneath the original materials and the book retains the look and feel of a period piece. When the covers are missing or unsalvageable, the best approach is not always clear. Because the sculpted boards and the blocked gold tooling are an irreplaceable part of the book's history, there's no easy way to recreate the look and feel of an antique Bible from the mid to late 1800's. While sculpting boards and having metal dies made for tooling is possible, it's fairly expensive.

These covers suffered heavy water damage, shrinking the leather and exposing large areas of the boards beneath. We were able to salvage the center portion of the leather, sculpt new boards to receive it, and suggest the correct period by a combination of blind and gold tooling.

It's far more common for the spine to be missing, and we face the same difficulties in matching intricate tooling without scanning the original and making new dies. Here's a recent effort that suggests the ornate original and blends well with the original boards.

The Springback

We've had some interesting books in from a county archive dating back to the early 1800's. In addition to mending and resewing the textblocks, we rebuilt some very interesting historical bookbinding structures. The most unusual is the springback, which features a hard curved spine that wraps around the textblock. When the book is opened, the pressure of that curved spine board throws the pages open all the way to their inner margin, a great convenience for the clerk. When closing, the "spring" opens slightly and then as it flexes back shut, pulls the textblock back into that curved hollow. They are rarely seen today, and require a number of specialized reinforcements across the inner joints. We built a model years ago as a visual aid, but typically take note of how each book was built and simply copy the original structure as we rebind.

Besides the structural uniqueness (much of which remains hidden), many ledgers from this era feature beautiful leatherwork with extra colored panels and tooling, both in blind and gold.