Another book conservation project

I recently took on a project to restore a lovely book of international folktales collected by Danny Kaye in the early 1950's. The book's cover was breaking away from the book body, but fortunately the paper and sewing were in good condition. Here are a few pictures, showing the book before, during, and after conservation.

As part of the project, I also produced a pdf booklet, showing a more complete collection of images of the conservation process. The whole project took about 10 hours, altho producing the booklet consumed more than 3 of those hours.

Front cover, before and after. Not a huge change. Pencil marks and spots removed, and stains made less noticeable.

The bottom of the spine was quite worn. Matching and replacing/repairing this fabric would not have generated any structural enhancements, and it would have been difficult, time consuming, and costly, so it remained undone. Choices, eh?

The cover's edges were very worn on the bottom and front, and the corners had become rounded and mushy.

I stabilized the corners and edges, and restored the color (more or less) using non-fugitive India ink. In a one step process, the ink, made of shellac, seals and hardens the mushy edges, while adding color. With a little experimentation I produced a combination of colors that matched the existing cover papers fairly well.

Inside, the hinges were splitting, exposing old, deteriorated gauze, which was all that still held the book body in the cover. The end papers (the "Starry Night" design), naturally, were ripped the length of the boards. The edges were all crinkled and squirreled up, but fortunately, with a little care, I was able to unravel them. The results weren't bad.

Once I cut the gauze, I could get at the inner spine of the book, first to clean out the old, acidic paper, gauze, and crud, then to build a new hinge, using unbleached muslin and Japanese paper.

Naturally, attaching the new hinge can be a bit tricky and stressful, but all went well. The book is now firm, tight, and structurally sound. Storing it in an acid-free box would further enhance its longevity.

Book repair - caution with Japanese paper

Siddur Repair Team:
To avoid the Japanese paper hinge pasting itself shut, simply place a piece of wax paper in the hinge. Here are 3 pictures showing what I mean.

Lay the wax paper in place, right up to the fold in the hinge; close the cover; and apply weights. Simple!

A book repair manual

The synagogue I belong to has a problem: all its prayerbooks (siddurim; siddur - singular) were poorly bound by the publisher, and are in desperate need of repair. I took a look at them, and saw that they were quite fixable. I was given permission to run a class on book repair, to teach congregants how to repair them. Since I want to pass on the skill, I felt everyone would need a DIY booklet with the specific steps and methods for repairing these books.

Naturally, I underestimated how long it would take to make the booklet. 12 or 14 hours later I had 2 booklets in pdf format. I decided on 2 so I could limit their size to something manageable to make, download, and view

I thought my blog readers (or anyone searching Google Drive, for that matter) might also be interested in learning a little about the structure of a book, and some repair skills. While the directions are targeted for a specific set of books -- our congregation's siddurim -- with a specific set of problems, the methods may be applicable to other non-valuable hard-bound books. Kid's, adults, seniors: DON'T try repairing any book that you think is valuable or important (to you or anyone else).

By the way, you will notice I never mention the use of tape of any sort in these booklets. Why? Because taping up a book to fix it is like drinking arsenic to make a headache go away.

So here are the links to view the pdfs in Google Drive:

BookRepair-Booklet1.pdf
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1BwxFAypY1BU2Rkdnk3LVM1bEU/view?usp=sharing

BookRepair-Booklet2.pdf
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1BwxFAypY1BUVR1RWllUVJXOFE/view?usp=sharing

Conservation of an old prayerbook

Cindy Arnson asked me to repair a siddur (prayerbook) that belonged to her grandfather, Jacob Fishman (zt"l). A little over 100 years old, and probably a bar mitzvah gift to him, this siddur was once a beautiful book. It had a carved ivory front cover with inlaid brass decorations, and a plain ivory spine and back. The covers were rimmed with brass, and there was a brass clasp. It was now in pieces. Of most concern, it's covers and spine had broken off. The paper of the book body had become brittle and discolored, and a few were torn. One signature (sewn section of the book) had broken out. What to do??

The book could not be fully restored. The paper had deteriorated badly and that is a process that can't be reversed. The binding itself was still tolerably good, and the loose signature could easily be tipped in (glued back in place). The boards of the covers were also in bad condition, but to remove the ivory, inlaid brass, and brass rims would be a long, difficult process that could very well end badly. Especially problematical would be re-attaching the brass rims. At least one corner would have to be opened and then re-soldered after being re-fitted to the new board. Given that the book had no meaningful public value ($100; maybe $200), a 30-60 hour restoration at standard restoration rates would involve a cost of some number of thousands of dollars.  Like I said, what to do?

One reasonable answer would be to tread softly, and do 4 fairly simple things: document the book's condition before restoration, re-attach the covers and spine, tip in the loose signature, and then document the book's condition again. That's what I did.

I carefully photographed the book when it came into my shop, and I photographed the stages of restoration. I used those photos, along with descriptive and explanatory text, to make two pdf booklets, a before and after. Here are a few photos from those booklets:

Here's the book as it came into my shop, in a plexiglass box (a good way to store it).

The 4 pieces of the book, from top left: book body, ivory spine, ivory back cover, brass and ivory front cover. The brass rim and clasp are easy to see.

The back of the spine, with rotten paper and the remains of the old, original cloth cover (purple-ish).

Detail of front cover, showing brass rim pulled away from board.

Another view of the brass rim and board.

The clasp on the back cover.

The first step in restoration: clean the spine of old paper, glue, cloth, crud.

Here you can see the cloth flange (left side of book) attached to the spine, that will be used to re-attach the covers. In the center is a cloth tube to be attached to the spine so the book can flex when it opens. Waxed paper extending from the top and bottom of the tube assure that glue won't fuze the front of the tube to its back (thus disabling its tube function).

Attaching the tube to the spine using PVA glue. The blue material is latex, wrapped tightly around the book to assure steady pressure to all parts of the tube, given that the spine has an uneven surface. The bars are weights made of lead poured into square aluminum tubes (nice square edges, safer to work with, and less maleable than lead alone). Pencil gives a sense of size.

The book, completed.

Clasp works again.