Cruise of the USS Dolphin, 1831

One of our returning clients dropped off this book last December and asked us to create a brand new leather binding with a custom design on its cover. Master had been holding this work for several months due to his preoccupation, but decided to entrust me with it back in June-July. When it comes to custom designs, most of our clients already have particular and clear designs they want, so all we have to do is to simply "materialize" it for them. But this work was different. The client had very vague ideas as to how he wanted it to look; however, he was certain that he wanted the design to be very simple and somewhat abstract. - Art Deco-like, yet to represent the subject of this book in some way. (like using a harpoon, whale, ship and ocean etc...as the basis of the design.) Humm... you see, it took me a while to get myself into his mind and precisely come up with the design that he had envisioned. I was so relieved that he liked the design I submitted very much. (whew!) As much as I admire old fashioned Rococo-Victorian designs in binding as a binder, I also adore Art Deco. So, it was actually fun to brain storm in sketches and visualize his wish. He won't be able to pick up this book until December, but because it turned out to be exactly the same as the design that I showed him in graphic, I think he'll like it. One thing I kinda regret is that I didn't use a smaller wheel for the curved lines, so the lines became a bit inconsistent. But hey, they are supposed to be waves, so shouldn't slight wobble be alright ?!? :-p
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UPDATE 11/02/2013 : The client later requested for a custom slipcase with a matching marble inner liner, so I just added the picture above.

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This is Journal of a Cruise of the United States Schooner Dolphin, by Hiram Paulding, published by G. & C. & H. Carvill. (New York, 1831.) The restoration / rebinding involved a complete resewing, recreation of a frontispiece map, a sewn upper headband and a new full leather binding with French curl marble endpapers and a gold tooling of the custom design.

The Innocents Abroad, 1869

 

It's rather embarrassing to say, but I've never read The Innocents Abroad, Twain's most popular work, featuring the narrative of his travels in Europe. I'd certainly enjoy his humorous cynicism and ironical observation of the unjust contradictions that the righteous would proudly justify, and his timeless critique of the all-too-human society. But I haven't read it. I feel like an illiterate fool. If the client of this book was reading this, he'd certainly be disappointed!

And boy, was I disappointed in the previous restorer of this book. I put the pictures up here, so I don't think I need to point out what I don't like about it in detail, but the strange and sloppy patch-up job on all four corners and the hinge with an unmatched material which needlessly got broken prematurely made me let out a big sigh for sure. Depressing as hell. Anyhow, I re-did what was supposed to be done in the first freaking place, but there are always some sort of problems when it comes to fixing someone else's job, that makes my job imperfect, which pisses me off big time. And the crap he/she left underneath had to stay forever. Don't I just loath it.

Anyway, as you can sense from my whiny rant above, I'm not in a cheery mood lately. Sorry about that. It's just that I'm under pressure and stress that I thought I should let it out a bit.. sigh..

Smollett's Don Quixote, 1755

There's a strange yet rather frequent phenomenon in the bindery that we jokingly call "psychic clients", wherein the client of the book that we are JUST about to work on would call to check the status of his/her book. It's actually scary! It's as if I'm sending some sort of a "telepathic signal" to them unconsciously, or they are sending me one so that I would pick their books to work on. ahhh..

The book featured in this post is one of them. I was digging out orders (books) which were 6, 7 months old, and I picked a couple of them and placed them on my workbench. As I was wondering which one to work on first, the phone rang, and somehow I knew who it was.... AHHHH!!

Anyway, this is a two-volume set of Smollett's Don Quixote. (1755, First Ed. London) It required re-hinging and reconstruction of the top and bottom of the spine, as well as facsimile sewn headbands and repairs of the corners. Also, a part of a skiver label was missing, so I created a patch, on which I re-tooled so that it appears as if there was never a missing piece. It's always difficult (often impossible) to lift the original spine leather without cracking for re-hinging when it's glued to the spine of the book, (called tight-back.) and this wasn't an exception. It was, as always, a nerve racking task. There's a young, preteen boy (I think he's 12.) who visits the bindery at night occasionally when his parents are working in the building. He showed up when I was at a critical point of lifting the spine leather, and just couldn't possibly be interrupted. But, he started running around the room and talking and laughing loud and all.. Ah,, you know what I did? I yelled at him.. I feel horrible.. I have to apologize to him next time I see him... :-(  But for now, just for the sake of it, I'm sending him my apology, telepathically. hummmm f.o.r.g.i.v.e. meeee ~

Homemade Beeswax !

I recently acquired a big chunk of honeycomb from a friend of mine after asking him to spare me some honey that he makes. (He's a beekeeper, painter, sculptor, tattooist, chocolatier, organic food maker, a building contractor, certified hemp crop grower (it's legal here.), a yoga instructor and soon to be a daddy. Amazingly, he does everything full time successfully.. Yeah, you go figure.. Don't try this in your country though,,, or you'll end up living on the street. Only in America, guys...) When I saw the honeycomb, I was at a loss of words, but soon realized that I could use the darn beeswax in the bindery! He told me how to separate the honey and beeswax, so I tried it. And here's the result! It sure looks usable, but I think it has a trivial amount of honey left in it that might be an issue for an actual use for my clients' property. So for now, I'm just keeping it aside and planning to test it in the future.
On the side note, I might travel to Germany next month with a renown bookbinder from New York. I may write about it when the plan actually solidifies. 

Holy Bible by M. Carey, 1815

This is an 1815 edition of Mathew Carey's King James Bible. (Not the so-called The Carey Bible with the Douay-Rheims translation.) The original cover was in a horrible shape, so the client wanted a new facsimile full leather binding for it. It's just a simple new binding work, but I decided to post this here because of the custom leather dyeing work I've done on this Bible.

Like many others since I started this blog, one of my dearest regular visitors of this blog, Huhu, inquired of me about my leather dyeing technique earlier this month. I haven't gotten a chance to respond to her via e-mail yet, but as I've always told everyone, what I can say is basically the same; I can't really explain my exact leather dyeing technique over the internet first of all. Every dyeing work I do is unique to the particular job I'm working on and every leather reacts differently to a different dye or chemical. So there isn't really a fixed text-book instruction I can give to anyone. All I can advise is to experiment with the medium that's available to you, and I just hope that people would see my works as a reference, in order to innovate their own unique techniques. :-)

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1798

No sooner had I returned from a week long trip to Canada than I had to leave town again for another week. So, I've been juggling things a bit frantically lately, which is the reason why I've been absent from my blog this month. As I've so far managed to post something every month since I started this blog little over a year ago, it just didn't feel right to miss this month's post. So, I brought a camera with me today to take pictures of this binding that I just finished.

This is a part of Vol. 88 (1798) Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, written by George Atwood, for which he was awarded a Copley Medal. This Atwood's thesis section was separated specifically from the original journal, so it needed a new binding. The client asked for a quarter leather binding with marble paper and a set of simple gold lines on the smooth spine, along with the author's name and the publishing date stamped on the bottom. I had to resew the book with five cords, so it would have been more fun to bind it if he asked for raised bands on the spine. But well, a simple gold lines on a smooth spine seems more traditionally accurate when it comes to academical periodicals of the era. So, the book collector client always knows best.

I dye, antique or mottle leather for most of my bindings, but I left the leather untouched for this particular work. It's sort of rare for me not to alter the texture of leather even a little bit, so I decided to post it on my blog.

By the way, in case you are interested in science and mathematics, PDF archives of all the Philosophical Transactions issues from the very first edition of 1665 are available online here for "A", (mathematical, physical and engineering sciences), and here for "B". (biological sciences)

The Holy Bible by Montgomety Ward & Co., 1903

You might've wondered how the distinguishably deep, beveled covers of large antique Family Bibles were made. They aren't curved or chiseled, nor sculpted, but are actually molded. Typically, the boards are constructed in two laminated parts; the flat base board and the molded top layer board. So, if someone asks me to make a cover like one of those antique Family Bibles, it's a bit of a trouble because I don't have a mold or an appropriate machine. As you can imagine, it's a time consuming work to create such deep ornate bevels, manually.

I was digging through the backlog shelves last week, and found this Bible, which came in at the end of last November. Horrifying! How in the world was this Bible left untouched for this long!? It appeared to be a straightforward restoration work, but as I examined the order form, I found out why no one wanted to touch it. The client asked for a brand new full leather binding with a similar design on the cover. He wanted ornate bevels... The original binding was bound in bookcloth, so the degree of the beveled lines weren't as deep as that of typical leather bound Bible's. But, the new binding was to be in leather, so the bevel would have to be deep or it wouldn't look good. Sigh.. I had to cut out 4 sheets of rather thick davy boards precisely in shape and sculpt the bevels and define the lines with finishing tools. My hand still aches from this work... Ah, a future of arthritis awaits..

I created a crisscross texture on the surface and antiqued the leather in order to make the bevels and blind tooling to look more defined. I hope the client forgives us for taking so long to complete his Bible.. Pray for me..

Oh, by the way, I'm planning to go to Vancouver Island (Canada) next week. Probably, I will be leaving on Friday, the 21st. We'll be in Victoria for a couple of days, then leave for Port Hardy. Our current intern, Mr. B, is going to visit his family there, and he generously allowed my master (One of those Bigfoot enthusiasts... sigh..) and I to go along with him. It'll be beautiful there at this time of the year in the NW, and will be a nice break from work for me.

Dracula, 1897 / Slipcase & Folder

The client of Dracula came in to pick up her restored books last week, but she left Dracula with me. As the first edition Dracula and its original cloth/paper covers should be kept together securely, the client decided that a slipcase should be made to house them both. The set of original covers is basically a mere paper, so I made a separate folder for it as well. The only thing the client said to me in terms of design was, "As long as you don't use a color like beige or something out of place, whatever you do should be adequate." Well, in order to be perfectly safe, I could just make everything in black buckram and call it quits, but it just seemed too boring. So I accented a couple of minor sections in lipstick red, and lined the folder with black silk moire which has sort of like, a tuxedo feel to it. I hope she approves of what I chose..

Dracula, 1897

Since I made a short video clip for the bindery website, (which I posted here on my blog only for 24 hours, a few weeks ago.) the SD card for my digital camera started acting strange and stopped saving pictures. So, I was unable to post anything on my blog for a while. The card's been renewed recently, so here I am, resurrected!

Speaking of resurrection, I just finished restoring a first American edition of Dracula, (who didn't technically "resurrect", but what the heck. He could make you an immortal vampire though. Bite me! :-) Like many other first editions of Dracula, this was rebound in leather from the original paper/cloth cover by the former owner. It has a beautiful blood-red Tiger marble on a black quarter leather binding. This marble paper perfectly, vividly resembles flowing blood. (although I just couldn't capture it well on camera under the horrible lighting in the bindery..) Unfortunately, the binding wasn't immortal and ended up being in my hands some hundred years later. The restoration of this binding was to do the external and internal re-hinge, reconstruction of the head cap on the top side of the spine, and some paper mending and cosmetic repairs on the corners. Very straightforward work, but as I haven't handled a first edition Dracula before, I thought I should post it here as my personal record.

The original paper/cloth cover was kept by the owner alongside the binding. In case someone's interested in seeing it, I'm posting a picture here.

This is Dracula by Bram Stoker, published by Archibald Constable & Company. (Westminster, 2 Whitehall Gardens, 1897)

Le Cuisinier Parisien, 1842

This is the last one of the series of French cookbooks that I've been posting on my blog lately. This book gave me a bit of a dilemma that kept me from working on it for three freaking days. I was just staring at the book, and kept going back and forth with the dilemma.. ok, here's what it was ... the client sent me a couple of tiny grainy jpegs of a book that she wanted her Le Cuisinier Parisien to be like. It's normally a no brainer, but as I examined the book, it had been re-sewn in radically raised cords, and the placements of those cords didn't match that of the false raised cords used for the book on the jpeg. Bummer.. My dilemma was, whether to break it down and resew it completely, or just use the existing cords for the new binding. Neither was preferable. The original re-sewing was still perfectly in tact with firm glue, so forcing the break-down and re-resewing wouldn't be a good thing for the book in the long run and it would cost her another hundred or so dollars. Yet, if I used the existing cords, (which, by the way, weren't placed precisely, but askance ... total sloppiness!) my binding wouldn't look like what she asked for, and it will look horrible and imperfect, that I would never put my name on. Hummm..

So, the best solution I could come up with, was to carefully hammer down the raised cords without harming the threads or the paper so that the spine became flat enough for me to apply false raised bands that match the jpeg model. Also, to hide a slight gap on the spine, I decided to do a set of French double, which is slightly tilted outwards naturally. Ah, I think my tactic was a success.

As the papier tourniquet marble paper used on the model wasn't available, I used a french shell printed marble that matched the closest. (with the client's approval, of course.) I antiqued the leather and the endpapers as well. The torn papers are mended, and five days of dilemma was over!

This is Le Cuisinier Parisien, ou L’art de la cuisine Française au XIXè siècle - Traité élémentaire et pratique des entrées froides, des socles et de l’entremets de sucre, suivi d’observations utiles aux progrès de ces deux parties de la cuisine moderne, by Antonin Carême, published by J. Renouard. (Third Edition, 1842)

Le Cuisinier Imperial, 1810

I've been sick since I swallowed a super hard chunk of baguette sandwich and scarred my throat a week ago. ( I couldn't chew it without breaking my teeth, so I thought I should just swallow the darn thing, letting the stomach acid take care of the rest. A big mistake!) I couldn't even speak for the next 24 hours, got a minor fever for a couple of days and now I can't stop coughing, for god's sake. Is baguette loaf supposed to be that hard?? I mean, does it have to be like a rock? Tell me, my French friends! Are Americans getting it all wrong!?

Anyway, continuing from the last post on French cookbooks, (The baguette incident just happened to have happened. Mind you.) this is another of the same client's books, Le Cuisinier Imperial, ou L'art De Faire La Cuisine Et La Pâtisserie Pour Toutes Les Fortunes, by A. Viard, published by N. Barba in Paris. (Fifth Edition, 1810) I was asked to preserve everything, and I thought it wasn't a problem at first, until I examined the spine. Sigh,, the spine leather was tightly glued to the spine of the book. Normally, if the spine leather's glued tightly like that, I'd recommend for a brand new facsimile leather spine. But, this book has a set of very unique gold ornaments that I couldn't replicate, and the condition of the leather was such that still had "body", which could possibly sustain the force of lifting. So, I was determined to lift it off. ( but, I told her that I might not be able to do it, before hand, just in case.) Well, although it took about 2.5~3 hours, I successfully took it off the spine!! Yey! I won!!!! (won what?)

(cough. cough. cough. cough.)

The restoration involved was a re-hinging of the spine with the original spine put back on, reconstructions / repairs of the corners and internal cloth hinges to preserve the original marble paper.