The latest issue of our Conservation Newsletter No. 2, Summer 2020 is out now.
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I was recently commissioned to bind an early eighteenth century book in a contemporary style and took the opportunity to explore Cambridge panels in a little more detail. I was inspired by conversations with Trevor Lloyd, and decided to follow his method of getting new rolls made from rubbings of books of the period.[1] I
1. Knocking-down stick: This tool was given to me at one (I forget which) of the binderies I worked at in London in the noughties. It’s a worthless but very useful tool, which appears to have been roughly fashioned from an off-cut. It has some patina so has some age but would be hard to date.
There are lots of books about books but none quite like that of Annie Carey’s The History of a Book. First published in 1873, it charts the development of printing, paper-making, and bookbinding from the unique perspective of a ‘new book’ sitting in a ‘dark, dingy room’ amongst ‘several old books’ (p.9). Upon the departure
The first in our new series of Conservation Newsletters is out now. No. 1, Spring 2020
Lord Chesterfield’s Letters (Dublin, 1776) is a fairly typical 18th century in-board binding, sewn on five raised cord supports, and fully-covered in smooth, sprinkled, brown calf over boards. As is common of books of this period from the British Isles it has thin degraded leather, brittle animal glue on the backs of the sections, and no
Stationery bindings come in all shapes and sizes and from many different periods: This latest addition to our collection is a striking example in green vellum, which dates from the mid-nineteenth century. Discovered not far from us in an antiques shop in Herefordshire, this inexpensive little volume (H:187 W:123mm) has a fantastic local connection as
Holinshed’s Chronicles is a 16th Century history of England, Scotland and Ireland; probably best known for its links to William Shakespeare’s history plays, for which it is said to have been a significant resource. It is a large folio of over 1500 pages and this copy was bound between wooden boards covered in calf leather.
Whilst browsing the shelves of a local charity shop in Worcester, we recently came across this modest copy of Arthur Ransome’s The Picts and the Martyrs [1] printed in Oxford at the Alden Pressand bound by A. W. Bain & Co. Ltd. What drew us to the book was not its faded green cloth exterior, brightly
Some observations about indigo… I was recently sent a fascinating image (see below) of an endband by a colleague who noted areas of un-dyed thread which he suspected was symptomatic of the hand-dying process used for indigo. This effect is certainly something I’ve observed when dying myself: the thread is dyed in skeins and the
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