By Flavio Marzo, Head of Conservation at the Cambridge Colleges' Conservation Consortium

Part 2

If you haven’t already, please see part one for an introduction to four interesting limp bindings from the Parker Library collection.

Looking at books with interesting and unusual bindings like these gets me very excited. I want to understand all the details of their physical features and how they are made. I am, first of all, a bookbinder and so what better way to use my Christmas holidays than to make one myself.

I chose to base my model on SP 67.

The volume selected to be re-bound was an inexpensive, in not very good shape late 18th century publication on medicine, bought recently here in Cambridge. There was almost nothing left of its degraded 20th century binding, so the volume was fully disbound.

To make the interesting blank endleaves in the way that was described in part one of this blog series, I prepared three folded sheets of blank paper along with a sheet of parchment. The parchment sheet extended behind the spine fold to create a hook, connecting the parchment sheet with the blank paper endleaves.

The back endleaves were also constructed in same manner but in this case using four folded sheets of paper and a much longer piece of parchment. This parchment would later become the pastedown of the back cover and the stiffener of the extending flap.

Fig. 1: Diagram showing the left/front endleaf construction

Figs. 2: Diagram showing the right/back endleaf construction, including pastedown extending onto flap to become a stiffener

A sewing frame was then set up for the new sewing on four single cord supports. The distance and arrangement of the sewing supports were based on our 16th century bindings.

Fig. 3: Sections prepared for sewing on sewing frame

In modern book binding (from the 18th/19th centuries onwards) strict and precise rules were introduced as to where to place sewing supports along the length of the book spine, especially for binding styles with raised, visible supports. Instead in our early binding examples we see a more organic construction, that was executed based on “eye measurements” rather than following precise rules. Interestingly we can clearly see the equal distancing of the bands not including the head and tail panels, due to the fact that the bookblock edges were subsequently trimmed.

Since the condition of the books is overall very good, it was not possible to establish if the sewing supports are made of cords or alum tawed leather, both commonly used materials in 16th century bookbinding. In my new binding cord was chosen to easily achieve the desired thickness and size of the raised bands.

The sewing was executed using linen thread. My 18th century book is formed of a series of sections made of only 2 bifolia of thin paper, this meant that packing of the sewing was avoided, to contain the swelling of the spine, and the creation of a round spine that would differ in appearance from the 16th century original. After the book was sewn, a first layer of adhesive (wheat starch paste) was applied to the spine to consolidate the bookblock. I could not see if any spine lining is present on the books from the Parker Library, so I have decided that no spine lining would be applied to my reconstruction.

Fig. 4: Volume after sewing, ready to apply adhesive to the spine

Normal practice in bindings of this period and later, is to use the extending parts of the sewing supports as lacing elements to connect the cover to the bookblock. In this case the supports were instead trimmed at the joints, at the front and back of the book.

Fig. 5: Book supports trimmed at the joints

At this stage, the parchment/paper endleaves were trimmed at head and tail to the size of the bookblock. This would be, for new bound books, the stage when the entire edges of the bookblock would be trimmed, but as the pages on my volume are already trimmed there is no need to repeat this step. 

Read part three here, where I cover and decorate the finished volume.