Just got the time to post the pictures of the finished work of Mr. Ross' books. He came in to pick up his books yesterday, and my master told me that he was happy. I'm glad. Master gave me a couple of additional books of Mr. Ross' to fix after these three were completed. I didn't take pictures of them, but one of them was a mess.. I mean, it wasn't a mess in terms of the condition of the book, but what I was asked to do WAS a nightmare! Someone had smeared a vanish or a lacquer sort of thing (?) on the cloth cover, and obviously he didn't do a good job. It was applied inconsistently and the brush strokes (?) were too visible with a bunch of missing spots. Mr. Ross wanted to make it look consistent and fill-in those spots.. Ahhh.. At first, I thought of taking the vanish off the surface instead of filling-in the missing spots or making the "brush strokes" disappear. But, whatever the substance was, it didn't come off at all. So, I had no choice but to do what I was asked to do originally. Anyway, I needn't to go into details about how I did it, but I managed to soften the brush strokes and filled-in the spots. After finishing it, the only issue I had was that I couldn't completely get rid of the odor of the chemical I had to use. Mr. Ross, if you are reading this, please make sure to keep the book away from other books, and keep it in a place which has a steady air flow, until the smell evaporates.
// For before pictures of these books, go to my former post: Books from Chet Ross Rare Books
I believe you do amazing work MHR. All of the books you work on for me have exceeded my expectations. I do not know what I would do without your skills, sensitivity and expert craftsmanship. An excellent example of what I am referring to would be your exceptional work on the Ainu Monogatari books (you have done three for me thus far). You show two of them on separate pages here in your blog, but it would be very revealing to show the before and after side-by-side — exceptional work. Arigato — Chet Ross
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for your compliment. (blush*..) You are one of our favorite customers and we are truly delighted about the fact you’ve chosen us as your binders amongst many bookbinders out there. Master J has started working on your books more and more, so you probably won’t see as many of my works on your books as before. But still, when Master decides that I could execute the job better, - usually, things that involve with invisible repairs or non-straight forward tasks and such, he forwards them to me. (Basically, “troublesome jobs” is what I mean… Am I a scapegoat!?! The answer is YES! Ah! Such a rhetorical question!!!) So, next time you bring such works, it’ll be probably I who’ll work on them. As for the “before & after” pictures of my works on my blog, I’ve figured that I should put them together in one post. I used to write a blog post spontaneously whenever I feel like it, thus the “before & after” pictures became to be separated. But, it’s not so “user-friendly”, is it? I’ve found that the people would want to see the transformation without going through tedium of going to another post back and forth. So as you might have noticed, I started putting them together in one post. Anyway, thank you for leaving a comment on my blog with such kind words. I’ve heard you’ll be visiting the bindery next week? Though I won’t be there, I’ll be asked to examine your books alongside Master J. It means a lot to me that my opinions matter to him. :-)
DeleteHi MHR,
ReplyDeleteI've just found your photos of Chet Ross's copy of "Ainu Monogatari" and would like to ask a special favour. In two weeks time I'm presenting a paper at the SCAR Conference Polar 2018 in Davos - specifically about this book, which is my latest polar translation project. I would love to show a picture of the book as part of my presentation. I don't have an original - I'm working from the print-on-demand edition, which is fine for translation purposes but not much to look at! Would you allow me to use your photo just on this occasion?
So you know a little bit about me - I worked in the library of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, UK, for 24 years, and retired last autumn. I was the Antarctic Bibliographer there, which is how I got involved in research on the 1910-12 Japanese Antarctic Expedition, and my daughter and I translated the official account "Nankyokuki" which was published in 2012 as "The Japanese South Polar Expedition 1910-12 : a record of Antarctica". I have the polar knowledge and did the research, my daughter who is properly bilingual did the translation (I decipher written Japanese with difficulty!)
I've met Chet Ross a couple of times, and helped him sort out his research trip to Japan which resulted in his Bibliography of the Shirase expedition. However, I can't find his email address - so I wondered if you might be able to help with the image?
Hope to hear from you, and kind regards, Hilary Shibata jhs1001@cam.ac.uk
Please check your e-mail. I've sent you a message.
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