My next job is a Bible (1861). It isn't one of those large ornamental family bibles you might have seen in your grandma's basement. This Holy Bible was printed by George E. Eyer & William Spottiswoode, the printers to the Queen's Most Excellant Majesty. This bible looks to be very plain, - full black leather binding with simple raised bands on the spine with no ornament embossing. It just says Holy Bible in gold. However, this humble looking bible has got split double fore-edge paintings of Da Vinci's Last Supper and King David Processing the Ark by Martin Frost. Though, obviously the fore-edge paintings weren't there originally back in 1861, what a beauty! I LOVE books with a fore-edge painting, and this bible's got one on each fore-edge view!! (Sorry for not being able to shoot the picture with the book open in the middle.. By doing so, it didn't show the details of the paintings well on the picture because of the lighting... ) Anyway, the restoration for this Bible is very simple, - fix the external and internal hinges, and minor repairs on the corners and spine. As you can see on the second picture, the spine is glued to the book instead of being hollow or tubed. It's a common medieval binding. Spines like this often cannot be "peeled off " from the book for a normal re-hinging because of the deterioration of leather. (In that case, a different method is used as an alternative to the conventional re-hinging. I'll talk about it next time I work on a book like that) But I think I can take the spine leather off this book without much effort because the condition of the leather's extremely good and it's rather thick. I'll update the progress later.
//For the completed work of this volume, go to my latter post: Holy Bible complete
No comments:
Post a Comment