Geneva Bible 1589

The client of this Geneva Bible asked me to take series of pictures of the restoration process, which included the brief steps of Cambridge on the front and back covers. Just for the sake of it, I thought I should put them on my blog in case someone wants to know how it's done. As you see, it's a no brainer; it's basically the same concept as stencil, and hand-tooling the framing with or without gold at the end.

By the way, this common design is called Cambridge because it became popular among binders in Cambridge in the 18th century.

Well, if you are interested in acquiring this particular Geneva Bible that I restored, contact Arundel Books.

 

Gold Tooling

Just to maintain the momentum of keeping up with my blog before my attention completely goes back to what's on my workbench, I took some pictures of my recent works to share with you guys.

A few years ago, I had developed a strange physical condition that made my hands shake out of the blue, which prevented me from doing intricate works like gold gilt/tooling. But it has gotten better and I haven't had the symptom little over a year.

So now I've been able to tool without a fear of unpredictable sudden shakes that would ruin hours worth of the entire job; the tooling is done at the end of binding process. Here are a couple of books I finished recently. Both are facsimile bindings based on the original.

This is a two volume set of Breton's China, four volumes bound into two. I forgot to note the publishing date, but it's probably 1813.

This is Travels in the Air by James Glaisher, published in 1871. I neglected to take more "before pictures" of this binding, but the original was exactly the same as my facsimile; A quarter binding with Antique Straight marble.

Works of William Penn

I was pretty determined to make more rapid progress on the two works of William Penn when I walked into the bindery on Thursday. No sooner had I gotten in than a bag of cookies on the counter got my full, I mean, FULL attention; Our current intern, Ms.S brought us homemade oatmeal raisin cookies. Oh, heck. Cookies first, work second. Common sense, yo! As I was hogging down the cookies like I haven't eaten for a week, an image of the Quaker Oats dude kept coming to my mind; his peculiar smile interfering with my pleasure time of the sweet deliciousness, as if to tell me to shift my focus back to work. Duh! Stop it! Stop smiling! Who is this Quaker dude, anyway!

So I googled it.  ....

And, his identity turned out to be ... ahh... none other than William Penn, indeed...... coincidence? uhh... you tell me, crazy paranormal junkies!

So the books here are two different works by William Penn. One is a first edition Wisdom Justified published in 1673. And the other is A Treatise of Oaths, also a first edition published in 1713. Basically, the client asked me to bind them identically based on the original cover of A Treatise of Oaths. I could simply blind-tool the Cambridge just like the original, but it was rather too boring, to be honest. So I decided to add another layer of mottling to give an extra dimension; you can easily make normally a too rigid Cambridge prettier by doing multiple layers. ;-)

Wisdom Justified was missing the title page, so the client asked me to find it online, and print/insert it in the book. Boy, you can find anything online nowadays, eh? I digitally cleaned it up and printed it on a 17th century antique paper. - we keep a collection of antique papers of different eras for these sort of jobs. (Just like forgers would. sheeee!)
One interesting thing about this work is that Wisdom Justified has a hand written note by George Whitehead, one of the original Quaker leaders with whom Penn had debated on the foundation of Quakerism. The note suggests the book was a gift from Penn.

The Barque, a sail journal by Robert Simonson.

We have a rather strict "unwritten policy" (or should I say a common sense?) not to read clients' hand written personal notes and records. But when it comes to very old documents and manuscripts, we certainly get fascinated of checking them out! (duh,,, that's one of the most beautiful aspects of having a job that handles "history", eh?) This torn notebook came in several months ago, and I finally get to work on it. A straightforward job: a brand-new facsimile binding. A suitable job for a binder with not so much energy. The name of the author is Robert Simonson, whose hand-writing is magnificent. ( Boy, people used to write beautifully, you know?) Some pages are written in Hebrew and Greek, and a language that's unknown to me, along with some hand drawn illustrations of landscapes. A very mysterious book for sure. Though the writings are beautiful (or maybe because of it), I had hard time reading his cursive letters! So, I couldn't precisely figure out who he actually was. But looks like he was on board, not as a captain or crew, but as an investor of some kind?  - There are pages containing the records of money movements of hundreds and thousands!? You know of how much a thousand dollars is equivalent to that of today's!? Well, whoever Mr. Simonson was, he sure was a helluva rich dude with an impeccable writing.

Anyway, the client asked for a brand new facsimile half binding with a similar marble paper. The thing about this book is that there are two different notebooks combined together, meaning that they were bound together after these notebooks were filled. ( Bound by a stationary firm out of New York, Jansen & Bell, so I guess this notebook is from mid to late 19th century.) So the first half and last part are different in sizes. In a case like this, you have to "jog" to the top when sewing, yeah? It's OK to have a book that's not "flush" on the bottom, but not OK if the top edge is ragged.

The restoration of this book involved a complete resewing, custom leather dying, antiquing of endpaper to match the preserved half endpaper, sewn headbands and paper restoration.

Oh, by the way, regarding our "unwritten policy", if you put "My Hate List" on the last page of your childhood diary, we can't help but read it. So be aware. hahaha. (I don't know what he did, but she hated you, Mike.. )

Sketches of a tour to the western country, 1810

Whoa! Long time no see! But, I'm still hanging in there, binding books and all. ;-) I'm able to work more now than a few months back, and hopefully my health continues to improve as time goes on.

Since I had considerable time, off and on, being away from work for the last couple of years, I've found myself pondering about things that able people would quip sarcastically as "things that people with too much free time would think", like about my goddamn life and existence and such. haha.. My life, humm, it's so strange that I no longer do or find interest in what I used to love. I'm more and more introverted and antisocial than ever. Everything seems so tedious to me. Last time I got a snippet of excitement outside of the bindery was when my $5-off punch card at nearby Taco joint became full. - As soon as I notice an instant smirk on my darn face, I wanted to smack my head with the corny picture of a smiling bikini chick on a Mexican beach hanging on the wall behind me. What the heck has become of me!

Like, I used to love traveling. It didn't matter whether to a foreign country or a planned two-week vacation. But whenever I got a chance, I tried to explore the world outside of my daily mundane-ness. - it was as simple as hopping on a random bus and see where it takes me, or as stupid as spontaneously buying a ticket to Edinburgh with knowing that my apartment lease would be up and I wouldn't have a place to sleep when I get back. haha.. Reckless, I know, but that was when I was young and fearless. The thing is, the world seems to be a lot brighter then than now, which seemed to have been continuing to get dimmer and dimmer. Sigh... But, you know what? When your health isn't 100%, you could become the biggest pessimist on the planet.

Well, anyway, as I flipped through this binding to see if any foreign objects were stuck in the signatures, and as I was doing so, I angle-read the contents a little bit. Fascinating. This is Sketches of a tour to the western country: through the states of Ohio and Kentucky, a voyage down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and a trip through the Mississippi territory, and part of West Florida, commenced at Philadelphia in the winter of 1807, and concluded in 1809, by Fortescue Cuming, published in 1810. The way of writing and its description of the places and his experiences seem very straightforward without any hard cynicism or sarcasm, yet with consistent honest subtle humor. You see lots of travel essays out there, old or new, that seem to try hard to get your vote by being a cynic, often too critical of the places and its culture as much. But this one's very easy for the reader to get the "picture" because it doesn't seem to be too opinionated. Very positive writing. I can easily fall in love with the featured places and its people of good-ol' America. There's not much info on the author, but I can imagine Mr. Cuming to be a well-to-do Englishman of free spirit! This book reminded me of what I used to be and made me a bit nostalgic..

This restoration involved a new full facsimile binding with a custom-mottled leather, sewn headbands, antiqued endpapers and some paper mending.

Encyclopædia Britannica, 1768

I've never missed posting a thing or two on my blog every month since I started it, but I did last month. It's really not a big deal, but I sort of feel "defeated".. What I mean is I hadn't felt good and had been unable to work full time since I came back from the trip mainly because of a severe jet lag and chronic shoulder/back pains triggered by my flight back home. But, I've been back to work almost full time since last week, and this time, (for the May-post sake!) I made sure to take a few "before pictures" of what I was to work on. And this happened to be the job.

This is a second edition, 4 volume set of Encyclopædia Britannica published in 1778~9. This is a broken set, - it has volume 1(all plates), 3, 4 and 5, but is missing volumes 1 and 2. The client is a dear regular, so when other volumes are found, he'd bring them next time. He has asked us to rebind them in full leather with a facsimile spine lay out. Generally, Encyclopædia Britannica has red and black skivers, but for these editions, I used an olive color for both, as the client wanted them in identical colors. Two of the volumes were missing headbands, so they needed to be re-sewn. And there were some papers that needed to be mended, but other than that, this was a straightforward rebinding work. It just took me a lot longer than usual to complete because I'm still not in a perfect health and am not like myself yet.. sigh, I gotta go pop some aspirin now.. bummer..

P.S. My trip to Asia went well. Japan trip was reasonably productive without much dramas, - I got some Japanese paring knives for my folks and a blog buddy on the East coast, and excellent mending papers, as well. ;-) and the Singapore trip was fun, except for the day-one being hit by an unbelievable rainstorm till about mid-afternoon. WoW, I've never experienced rain like that!?! Anyway, one major regret was not bringing more $$$$$ to Singapore. Boy, how the heck do people live there?? I mean, I was warned about everything being super expensive, but when I saw a can of the cheapest beer at $8, I almost fainted. (hahaha) But I will go back there, certainly with friends next time. In all in all, I had a great time!

The Works Of Edgar Allan Poe, 1905

I was working on this three-volume-set of a first edition, The Works Of Edgar Allan Poe, published by Thomas Nelson & Sons (1905), yesterday when I realized it was Poe's 205th birthday the day before, after reading a news article about his unidentified mysterious follower, nicknamed the "Poe Toaster". Apparently, he, the "Poe Toaster" who bears a cane and wears a cloak, had been showing up at Poe's grave on his birthday at midnight since the centennial anniversary of Poe’s death of 1949. He leaves a half drunk bottle of Martell cognac and three roses arranged the exact same way each time, then would disappear into the night. To this day, no one knows who he is. But it seems that he hasn't been seen since the Poe's 200th birthday in 2009. Hummm, maybe, the original "Poe Toaster" who's said to have died in the 90's intended to continue this tradition until Poe's 200th birthday, so the person who was passes this ritual after his death stopped it as instructed? Well, it's a mystery for sure.

Anyway, the client of these volumes asked for brand new facsimile bindings as the original soft leather cases were in horrible, deteriorating shape. My work was to make simple French joint new leather bindings for these tiny books. And the floral ornament on the spine wasn't too complicated to imitate. So, I've been having rather stress free few days, while Master's been working on an extra large folio book with tons of paper mending for the last four days. hohoho. It must really suck to be him. ha! <--evil

The client also brought another three-volume-set of different titles and publisher to restore in the same way, so for the sake of it, I'm posting a picture of that as well, though they are Emerson and Kipling by T. Y. Crowell & co.

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.

Sophocles : Oedipus Coloneus, 1885

We've had an unusually dry, spectacular summer this year, but it looks like the rain is catching up with our luck. An introvert like me wouldn't mind a gloomy rain, in fact, I'd rather prefer it to a persistent glare of sunshine. But, it appears that all the debt of rain have concentrated in the last few days and it's been pouring like a crazy river with a strong gust that resulted in flood and fallen trees in some parts of our state. I heard there was a tornado here today as well... Tornado!? It normally doesn't happen here. I hope no one got hurt... What an insane weather it's been, though... So, I've been leaving all the craziness outside and cocooning myself with a calmness of dusty old books in this century old basement.

This book I chose to work on came in several months ago and has been on top of our backlog list for quite sometime. So I have been fully aware of this book, - not that I had forgotten about it or anything. What the client asked us to do is to create a brand new leather spine with facsimile gold tooling, as the condition of the original spine leather was deteriorating to the point when it was touched, it fell apart. The reason why I have been putting this book aside until now was because I wasn't one hundred percent sure how to deal with the former restoration. As you see, it had been rebacked and hinged previously with the original spine leather glued back on. For some reason, I just couldn't decide whether to leave parts of the visually obvious previous restoration as is and restore the book accordingly, or rid all of it in order to set the base to a default so that I could make my restoration work seamless and wouldn't look obvious. Anyway, I chose the latter because it's the right thing to do despite of the difficulty of matching the leather perfectly to the pasta española. I had series of tools that were pretty similar to the original, so everything went smoothly after having made up my mind about the direction. (The removing and cleaning of the previous restoration of superficial internal cloth hinges was nasty though..)

This is Sophocles, the plays and fragments, Part II. Oedipus Coloneus, by Richard C. Jebb, published by Cambridge University Press. (London, 1885) The restoration involved a rehinge with custom-dyed leather, facsimile gold tooling, internal cloth hinges and restoration on the edges and corners.