A few bad apples ...

A regular client of ours, Easton Books from Mount Vernon, WA, dropped off a 9 volume set of The Writings of Thomas Jefferson awhile back, asking us to repair rat damage on the spines of two volumes, and a brand new facsimile binding for one volume. If you are a book restorer, you know inquiries like that, wherein every volume except for one or two is in perfect condition, so as to restore only the few damaged ones without making them look out of place amongst the set. Yeah, you know, The Bad Apple restoration. It's actulally a very tricky thing to do, to say the least. Especially, these particular bad apples were difficult, mainly because of the kind of leather I'd have to imitate and seriously heavy molding on one volume, which has infected all the way through to the middle of the book. Naughty, absolutely naughty. So, I had been putting this work aside, and letting myself wait till I felt "right" and mentally ready to tackle it. But, about a week ago, the client called and asked us to finish it up because they wanted to take the set to the annual Antiquarian Book Fair.

So, here they are. I finished them last night, at last. I did all my best to make them look as invisible as possible and naturally blended in among the other volumes. I hope the client approves my work.. and hopefully it'd find a new home during the book fair. **

This is  The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Henry A. Washington, published by J. C. Ricker, Taylor & Maury in 1856.