A Box in A Box

This is just a simple, straightforward buckram clamshell box without any sort of gold tooling, (nothing fancy though it has a black silk moire lining. **) but it's got an another box inside. This is for The Holy Bible, published by American Bible Society in 1847 (5th edition). The client asked for an another container inside of the clamshell for family ephemera, so you see that I had to build extra walls to hold the box up. I didn't have to do that, but I wanted an extra protection for the Bible. By the way, I've noticed most clamshell boxes out there don't have four walls to perfectly secure the content. I don't know why... Well, if you are thinking of making a clamshell for your precious manuscripts, I'd recommend you to build a full wall (with the spine wall with an opening) all around the content so that the box is perfectly solid, and can withstand any damage from outside. Anyway, as for the restoration of this Bible, it's a new full leather facsimile binding with custom mottling. 

The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1880

This is The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Vol II , published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., printed by Riverside Publishing. (1880) My Master's new and temporal intern from India, who's to leave the United States in a couple of weeks, was interested in the restoration of this volume while I was working on it. She comes in once or twice a week, so needless to say, I completed it without having her around. As the client is picking this up on Monday, I thought I might as well put this up on my blog so that she could see how it turned out. One thing that I mentioned to her about this restoration was how I'd recreate the gold gilding as close to the original as possible. Basically, the client asked to replace the leather corners and the spine completely, and do a facsimile gold gilding on the new spine. In cases like this, as we do not have the exact ornaments, we must create similar designs by combining a series of hand tool ornaments together. In case she's interested in seeing the finishing tools used for this work, I took a picture of them. I think I briefly mentioned to her about headcaps, so I took a picture of that as well. I hope the picture gives her some ideas about what it is. Oh, by the way, this isn't the job that crippled a joint of my shoulder blade that I mentioned on my last post, Family Devotional Bible. The book is La Merope Tragedia, for which the client wants a brand new leather case with really decorative gold gilding of a 16th~17th-century French/Italian binding "feel". I'll post the book on my blog when I finish it. I think I'll  simplify my original design a bit so that it won't break my back again!

The Family Devotional Bible by The London Printing & Publishing

For about a decade, I've had a horrible chronic joint pain on the upper part of my body, namely my shoulder, shoulder blade, elbows, wrists and fingers. I normally pop in a couple of Advil to release the pain, (I'm not into any sort of pharmaceutical painkillers that are addictive!) but once the ache starts, it just doesn't go away completely for a few days. Boy, I'll probably suffer from a severe arthritis when I get old.. Well, if you get deeper into the trade of bookbinding, you'd know it's really not like how it's presumed in the modern world as a friendly craft hobby. It seems that there are more women who are interested in bookbinding than men now a days, but I tell you, Girls! It's rather tough on girls physically. Anyway, I have been having this usual, utterly annoying pain on my shoulder blade since I finished this Family Bible a few days ago. No sooner had I started working on it than I regretted choosing it as my next job because I realized I couldn't even hold the Bible with my hands, (I have rather small hands..) and it weighted a ton! This is The Family Devotional Bible with marginal references by The Rev. Matthew Henry, printed & published by The London Printing & Publishing Co., Ltd. It doesn't have a publishing dated mentioned, but based on the family record and the binding design of this type of Family Bible by this publisher, I'd assume it's published in the early-mid 1800's. I took photos of the title page and the frontispiece, so if anyone knows the publishing year of this Bible, let me know! This Bible simply required an external and internal re-hinge, and repairs and reconstructions on the edges and corners. But what's so damn troublesome was its size... The average book block of a normal Family Bible is about 2.5"~3.5", but this is one of those really thick Devotional Bible which block thickness is about 5", and with the covers, it's 5.5". Needless to say, it's super heavy... Well, it successfully triggered my chronic pain! (And stupidly, after this Bible was finished, I started working on a job that involved a serious amount of finishing (hand gold gilding) and now I'm useless. I think I'm gonna have to put the gilding work aside and probably work on something less evil !!!!!!!!! 

-----Follow-up-----
Someone gave me an insight as to the publishing date of this Bible. Here's his/her comment.
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I own one of the family devotional bibles by Matthew Henry. The reason there is no publishing date is that it was not published at one time. This volume was published in 16 parts. To acquire a complete copy one had to start a subscription in 1840 and maintain the subscription until 1861 or 2. Anyone who acquired all 16 parts could submit them to be bound. My copy does have a publishing date of 1865. The dates that individual copies were bound could vary considerably.

Bookbinder's & Bookseller's marks

I think I mentioned before that we "collect" bookbinder's & bookseller's marks (a.k.a. book trade labels, bookseller's labels) when clients don't bother keeping them. I put the word "collect" in quote because we aren't serious collectors. It's just that some of these are too pretty to throw away, so we started putting them in an envelope and it just became a habit. Well, as there seem to be avid bookplate collectors out there, (like Mr. Jaffe of Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie) I thought some of you might be interested in knowing that there are such a thing as bookbinder's and bookseller's marks to collect! In case you are wondering how they look like, I just scanned our collection for you. Kinda cute, aren't they?

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Humm, looks like there ARE indeed people who collect these little labels. There are websites dedicated to bookseller's marks. Check them out! The Exile Bibliophile , Bookseller Labels

Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 1672

As I've been sooooooo inundated with work lately, I haven't been updating my blog for a couple of weeks! The thing is, Master has been caught up with publishing jobs for a client, and all the restoration works have been on my shoulders.. Anyway, for the last couple of days, I had been working on the most famous book of Sir. Thomas Browne's, Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Enquries into very many received Tenents and commonly presumed Truths, together with the Religio Medici, published in 1672. (The sixth and the last edition) Well, first of all, this book has been "restored" previously, and the person obviously didn't know what he was doing... He used bookcloth/cloth to attempt re-hinging, (and patched a piece of unmatched leather over it superficially to cover it up.) and inevitably failed. (The picture on the right.) I think I've mentioned how frustrating it is to fix someone else's jobs sometime ago, and this wasn't an exception. One crucial issue I had regarding the restoration of this book was that it was impossible to remove the previous "re-hinge" material (which was glued underneath the leather on the boards), without damaging the original leather. Thus, I had to leave it alone, and had to do a rehinge with the initial material still attached to the leather.. You see, it's like a medical doctor couldn't take out a bullet from your brain because it would result in damaging you even more, and you'll have to live with the darn thing in the head for the rest of your life! So, people, if you wanna fix your book by yourself, you gotta consult with a bookbinder, yeah? Anyway, in terms of restoration of this book, it needed a re-hinge with leather that I custom dyed to match the original, the edges and corners of the boards reconstructed, and because it was missing headbands, I did a quick set of one core headbands sewn. The client asked me to design the spine to be suited for the era of the binding, so I did a red, antiqued leather skiver and raised bands with blind band ornaments, just like the original. Oh, by the way, this book had a book plate with an engraving by William Hogarth, so I took a picture of it. (By the way, the engraving and the quote on the bookplate "I have several of the best books, though some of them are a little torn." are from Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, Chapter 8. )

Northfield High School Yearbook, 1927

School yearbooks are something that I really don't wanna open, unless someone asks me for a good laugh. You know, there's always someone whose picture makes you think, like, "WTF !?!" or " Damn,, it must suck to be you.." sorta thing, and my yearbook pictures definitely belong to the category. I have an unusually thick and tough hair for an Asian and when I was a kid, I really didn't take care of it so well. And because my mom kept it short throughout my childhood, my hair always looked like a mad scientist's after his lab got exploded. - The ultimate bad-hair-years was what it was. So, whenever we get yearbook restoration jobs here, I habitually look through the pages, looking for someone with whom I can commiserate! Anyway, aside from my bad habit of cynically checking out the photos, it's always interesting to see the styles and fashions of each era. This yearbook was published in 1927 for Northfield High School in Minnesota. People in there are all looking fabulous.. (I couldn't find a single "WTF!" picture.. Damn it! And for your information, people were all fit back then... Pre-fast food era....) Anyway, in terms of restoration, the client wanted a brand new leather case with the original front cover inlay-ed, and the book needed to be re-sewn. It was a simple job.

Self-Help by Samuel Smiles, 1897

You know a guy named Bear Grylls, who eats bugs and dirt in the wilderness to survive? (yuck... am shivering.. brrrrr...) Looks like his great-great-grandfather was a bit of a public figure himself. He, Samuel Smiles authored a bunch of books but his most famous book was Self-Help. Well, growing up in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, and being in a family of Cameronian, I kinda see why he wrote a book like this. (Just to remind you that I have neither political nor religious affiliations what-so-ever. I just happened to take before-after pictures of this book and it's such a pretty binding, so I featured it here.) Anyway, this is one of the earlier editions of Self-Help with illustrations of conduct and perseverance, published by John Murray in 1897. (Popular Edition, Third print) In terms of restoration, it just required an external and internal re-hinging. As you might know, some books have first and last signatures sewn in a stab manner, and those stab sewn signatures have tendency to get broken as the thread creates too much stress on the pages, as you can imagine. I don't like stab sewn books mainly because of that. (The other reason is because stab sewn signatures don't open flat.) I took a picture of the fate of stab sewn signatures, so that you can see it yourself. I know stab sewing seems to be popular amongst bookbinding hobbyists, but be aware! They won't last long. You might say, "But the traditional Japanese books are stab sewn, and last hundreds of years!" Well, the paper they used is different. They used a paper that is extremely flexible and has no grain, thus it could withstand the stress created by the thread. (But of course, the thread gets broken because of the stress like any other stab bindings.) Anyhow, if you want your book to last long, just sew it by the European method. :-) Oh, by the way, I was just gonna use a bookcloth for the internal hinge, but somehow, I took a trouble to use leather.. Hummm, I think I had one too many beers that night. The thing is, leather's better, so the client got a better deal!

Yapp Bible

I'm finally finishing up the last two books from Chet Ross Rare Books, and they'll be complete tonight. The main reason why I've gotten behind on finishing these books is because of my masterrr! He gave me a couple of Bibles that needed to be done in a couple of days... Anyway, this is one of the Bibles. I forgot to check the publisher and the date of this Bible, but I took some pictures of the process of a partial re-sewing. I'd assume that the complete re-sewing is a no brainier to most people, but I thought some people might wonder how bookbinders re-sew a partially broken signatures without completely breaking down the book. This is one of the methods of re-sewing the parts of broken signatures. Basically, what's shown here is to connect the original thread to a new one, and sew the broken signatures together. Anyway, the owner of this Bible wanted a facsimile case, but didn't want to spend money on leather. So the cover material is a black imitation leather buckram with a flap on the edges. (Yapp binding) 

British and Irish Salmonidae, 1887

Hummm, I thought this book might be of interest to some readers of my blog, so I decided to post it. You see, this is an example of a "restoration" gone wrong. Someone, hopefully not a person who makes a living as a conservation bookbinder, tried to "patch up" damaged parts of this cloth binding. Indeed, we sometimes get clients asking us to do very minimum minor restoration on their books, and often what they ask us to do is basically to "patch-it-up". I, personally, don't like those sort of jobs because I know they aren't perfectly fixed and most of the time, it's a tricky job to perform. HOWEVER, those patched-up parts shouldn't be the first parts to be broken or get damaged again as the years go by. You know what I mean? OK, take a look at this book. Normally, the top and bottom spine of a book get damaged even if everything else is still fairly intact, like this book here. So someone tried to "fix" the spine, as you see. The method/approach of which he/she attempted was not totally far off in terms of "patching up the fragments",by any means, yet the integrity of the repairs were incredibly loose (literally) and the craftsmanship was absolutely sloppy, resulting in the parts to have fallen apart too prematurely and damaged the original even more. As a conservation bookbinder, I'm always very nervous and on edge when handling a work because the fate of the book is totally in my hands.- I'm not allowed to make mistakes, let alone damage the book because of me. Anyway, in case I sound like I'm being arrogant by pointing faults of someone else's work here, I just want to clarify that I'm not saying I'm better than other binders. (Absolutely no way! I'm FAR from perfect!!! I'm an amateur compared to the masters in the world!!) What I want to tell you here is to be careful which bookbinder you're gonna ask to restore your precious books. And if you aren't a bookbinder, but wanna fix a book by yourself, no matter how minute the task might look to be, you should consult a bookbinder whose reputation is solid.
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Mr. Ross, in case you are reading my blog, I'd like to inform you that it'll be another couple of days till I finish all of your books. - I have two more books to go. I apologize for the delay. I'm a horrible multitask-er, so I can't work on more than one book at a time. We'll e-mail you when they are actually done. Thank you for your patience.

Cherry Blossom

The owner and his wife of Newberry Books gave us a bunch of cherry blossom branches a couple of days ago, and now they are fully blossoming! Spring has come to the bindery! It reminds me of my parents house which is located by a stream with a long row of cherry blossom trees. I don't think they are in season yet as I heard that they had an extremely cold winter there.