The Vespiary Book Binding & Book Conservation

I just quickly wanted to share a unique archive with you on this day of remembrance.

StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit project whose mission is to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening.

By recording the stories of our lives with the people we care about, we experience our history, hopes, and humanity. Since 2003, tens of thousands of everyday people have interviewed family and friends through StoryCorps. Each conversation is recorded on a free CD to take home and share, and is archived for generations to come at the Library of Congress. Millions listen to our award-winning broadcasts on public radio and the Internet. StoryCorps is one of the largest oral history projects of its kind, creating a growing portrait of who we really are as Americans.

StoryCorps is trying to get at least one story for each of those lost on September 11th.  In an interview on Democracy Now, founder Dave Isay said that collecting these stories was an attempt to get back to the days of grace that prevailed in New York City in the days just following the attacks.  It’s a remarkable act of peace and understanding and a touching memorial.  I’ve listened to a few of the stories, and hope you take a moment to do the same.

Copies of the recordings will ultimately be housed at the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center and the future National September 11th Memorial Museum. 

Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt? - Where are those who were before us?

It’s been a busy day, hence no time for blogging.  Just pics from the work table, and the 25th century…

All eyes have been pointed towards China in the recent weeks because of the Olympics; mine are no exception. A recent article in the China Daily caught my eye, and it’s worth passing your way. A devoted group of conservation professionals have dedicated themselves over the last 18 years to restoring numerous ancient texts in danger of crumbling away into dust, including the Dunhuang Scrolls from the Mogao Grottoes (aka Caves of the Thousand Buddhas). Several of the conservators has wonderful things to say about the polymathery of the field:

…restoring ancient texts is far more than just patching and mending. “It takes learning in many fields for someone to succeed in this career,” said Zhang Ping, 55, former head of the restoration center.

For example, a master in ancient text restoration must be a connoisseur of paper and fabrics to know what materials to use for repairs. A restorer should also have the expertise to recognize when a book was published from its edition and printing style, Zhang explained.

When the pages of a book are loose or damaged, a restorer must be able to read ancient Chinese well to sort them out in sequence. When the pictures are damaged or indistinct, it helps if he or she knows how to paint to add strokes and colors where they are needed, Zhang said.

“We treat ancient works like doctors their patients. We need to diagnose before deciding on what steps to take. Many classics are the sole copies extant. An error could cause an irrevocable loss. The longer I work in this profession, the more I feel like I am skating on thin ice,” said Zhang, who joined the library some 20 years ago as a carpenter.

IDP Conservation also has a nice little blurb about the work there.

Also in the news today (a different kind of preservation): an important shrine in Japan gets some much needed restoration.

A website that I spend WAY too much time on is the social blog, Metafilter. There are about 65,000 users who trawl the internet in search of (theoretically) the best of the web. What the best consists of is frequently a topic of dispute, but just yesterday someone posted a collection of Book repair links. This is fine and good, and there are some goodies in that collection, but another user had a marvelous comment that I’m reprinting here.

Sigh.

It’s a two-edged sword … and what keeps places like the New England Document Conservation Center in business.

I wasn’t aware of the Alaska manual, so on a lark I looked at the “Advanced Repairs”. I found this comment telling:

There are many older book structures that function differently from a case bound book. If a book looks or operates in an unusual way, carefully research the book structure or consult a trained book conservator before attempting repair.

Oh, yeah. Definitely. It suggests a “How to do trepanning at home” attitude.

While much of the hand work that conservators do doesn’t require a graduate degree in library science, there is SOOOO much more to it than simply “fixing the book”. And sadly, too many of the library science programs today have no component that addresses the issue of collection preservation and conservation (the hot thing these days is “digital preservation” … and yes, THAT’S important, but the physical collections are still waiting for the proper respect they deserve). Preservation work must, of course, deal with thousands upon thousands of such materials, so it is good that these manuals and sites are there to encourage an understanding of the task. But please be a little more Hippocratic about it: “First, do no harm.”

As the printed collections in our institutions grow older each year, and thus increasing in the possibility of their rareness, such attempts to locally repair may cause more harm than sending them out to trained conservators.

I must say that I am glad to see that the Dartmouth entry on wet books states that they should, ideally, be freeze-dried then treated. I can’t stress how important that little fact. Having seen and dealt with too many floods and wet books, this fairly simple approach is a non-invasive way of dealing with a huge problem and I’m glad that more people will now be aware of it. I never want to see the aftermath of a flood in the library again … I’ve had my fill (3rd link: scroll down to the section entitled “Libraries in Crisis: Accounts of the Houston Floods”). I know my comrades-in-bone folders would say the same about Katrina.

Support your local libraries and bookstores, support your local librarians …
posted by aldus_manutius at 7:35 AM on August 26

Thanks, aldus, for sticking up for all the professionals out there.

And, as promised in my reply to that post, here are some pics of the book (a classic Arabian Nights with lovely woodcuts) bound in suede and cat wallpaper:

Note the sequins and gold ink pen decor!

Imagine a whole room in this!

Recently I repaired a whole number of Baedeker’s travel guides. This publishing house was yesterday’s equivalent of Lonely Planet, or perhaps Fodor’s. It was mildly titillating (can I say that anymore?) for me because I had never come across one in real life before; I had only heard about them in the movie A Room With a View, and only then, according to Miss Lavish, as something to be left behind. Each of these little gems is a trove of gorgeous maps, some of which you can see scanned here (check the links in the upper right hand corner). The text is a little dense and hard to follow since Baedeker chose to focus on facts and statistics rather than sentiment, as had been done previously in travel memoirs, but every now and then you can catch glimpses of what it was like to travel 100 years ago. This website is a great tool for those interested in collecting Baedeker’s journals.

Back to the repair. One volume in particular was in dire straits. Many of the pages were falling out, so I expected to do some paper repair and sew the feller back together. Check this: the book was stapled together! The pattern was too regular, though, to be hand-done. I had seen this in a few Russian novels as well. Upon further investigation, I found out that around the 1920s, Baedeker changed binding methods from sewn volumes to wire-bound. The unfortunate result being that the wires have a tendency to rust, and ultimately eat through each signature.

I was curious to find out what this wire-stitching machine looked like and trawled around til I found this:

from a book called Women in the Bookbinding Trade. Of course I had to read this book! Turns out it’s a Jungle-esque exposé on the horrors of labor in the bookbinding industry in New York City around the turn of the century. Long hours, unequal pay for genders, unhealthy workshop conditions, you name it. The author, Mary Van Kleeck, was a champion of workers rights - this book was just one of many she wrote to bring to light the various unfair conditions. The Google book linked here has lots of fascinating photos of NY binderies and the women that worked in them.

Just another day in the life of fixing books and not being able to restrain myself from finding out more!

Recently I had the most perfect work day - the morning skies were ringing as only they can up here in the Rockies. I drove north past the Mission Mountains to Pablo and the Salish-Kootenai College to give a workshop about basic preservation techniques at the library there. I have my time teaching in Japan to thank for making me more at ease speaking in front of groups of people. I used to be absolutely petrified of public speaking (and there went my illustrious acting career), but I love talking to folks about topics I’m passionate about. I had a great group of attendees who all had marvellous questions and took to the hands-on part very well: sewing-machine encapsulation, paper mending with heat set tissue, and archival pocket modification.

We had an interesting discussion about viewing text on paper vs. electronically, something that has recently been a topic of discussion in the media. For the record, I think the arguement “books vs. digital” is not valid because the two accomplish different goals. But there have been many studies on the effect of reading different formats on the brain. My Google-fu is failing me right now, but I listened to a radio program that described the whole body process one engages in while reading paper-based text. The hand follows along or gets ready to turn the page, which gives the brain a break in trying to keep its place on the page. The brain reading digital text has to work harder to figure out where it is because it has no corporeal assist. I also remember hearing that time spent reading a web copy of a newspaper vs. the same copy in print format was much less (something like 11 minutes vs 45 minutes).

Again, I think what’s at play here is not necessarily one vs. the other, but how each media lends itself to different end goals. Print encourages more in-depth reading and contemplation, while digital is scannable, malleable and more conducive to communication.

We did talk about the forgotten sophistication of book technology (forgotten because books are so ubiquitous and can be so cheap these days), which has made it part of our lives for centuries. I’ll leave you with the following from Valleywag:

Another one! Something about the summer that brings out book thieves.

So you work at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC, and one day a swingin’ 50-something dilettante bedecked in expensive clothes bought by mommy drops by to ask you the value of his “friend’s” tome….which turns out to be a hot First Folio lifted from the University of Durham 10 years ago. Now the question is, do you think he’s trying to con you, or do you think he’s just the biggest patsy in the land of bibliophilia?

While this guy (Raymond Scott) doesn’t look like the paragon of virtue his cuban girlfriend makes him out to be, he probably wasn’t one of the original professionals that hit the University in the first place. It’s probably the folio wasn’t the original target anyway, but one of a haul that included a 15th century manuscript, including a fragment of a poem written by Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of The Canterbury Tales, two works by the 10th century poet Aelfric, printed in 1566 and 1709, an edition of Beowulf printed in 1815 and a 1612 book of maps and poetry. This Slate article describes exactly why you couldn’t stand to profit from a stolen First Folio anyway.

What chaps my hide (I can say that with impunity now that I live in Montana, right?) is the fact that great damage can occur to priceless treasures during theft and attempted theft, for example, Edvard Munch’s Scream. Rips, stains, water damage, irreparable harm. As if we don’t already have enough work on our hands, we gotta tidy up after thieves, too?!

Catherine Sease wrote a really great article detailing what is lost when artifacts are stolen, especially cultural artifacts removed from their original context.

Some archaeologists estimate that looted artifacts have lost 95% of their value to tell us what was going on in the past.

Be sure to scroll down to section 4 regarding “The Conservator’s Dilemma” - what a conservator should do when presented with an object suspected of being stolen.

As you know from a previous post, I listen to a steady diet of podcasts while I work, one of which is Stephen Fry’s podgrams (you may know Mr. Fry from his character in “V for Vendetta”or for “Wilde”). He also happens to be the darling of the BBC and an insatiable bibliophile. I was recently alerted to his marvellous video about the Gutenberg Press that he starred in, where he not only researches the history behind the press, but then commissions several craftsfolk to recreate as much of the process as possible. Do watch!

Out of an original 180 tomes, there are about 48 copies of the bible left in existence (21 of them being considered “perfect”) and a number of them have been digitized. The German Wikipedia has a good list of those available. NPR has an older program about the digitization procedure, performed by a company called Octavo. (If you like to read instead of listen, the NYT has an informative article about Octavo and the process).

Oh and if you’re reading this, Mr. Gentleman Printer, in case you had forgotten about my request for new equipment, here’s a Cyclotron analysis of the Gutenberg inks from a physicist at my alma mater. I hope we can get one for ourselves, too!

It’s my very first link dump! I’ve been away (making sure my brother got good and married), and have been thinking about all these groovy word-related sites to feed to you.

A few of these may be slightly old news, but then again, I don’t know where you get your news from, so I’ll take that risk.

Last week’s hotness is Wordle, a tag cloud visualizer that lets you choose font, color, arrangement, etc. I had fun plugging in my del.icio.us tags, as you can see.

While I furiously work on my various conservation projects, I listen to a lot of podcasts. A LOT. The hands are working, so why not the brain, too? My themes tend towards science and news media, and a recent episode of “On the Media” dealt with how two stalwarts of journalism have redesigned their headquarters. The New York Times hired sound artist, Ben Rubin and statistician, Mark Hansen to design a new art installation that will remain relevant for the next few hundred years. I must admit, the visual was not as stunning as what I had imagined by listening to the podcast, but I love the idea of turning information overload into a kind of unconscious text-based emergence. (check out Rubin’s cool installation over at the Minneapolis Public Library!)

Next up is Jonathan Harris, and his blog-ripped mash-up, We Feel Fine. A similar vein as Moveable Type, Harris mines blog entries that include the word “feel” and makes various visualizations based on mood, gender, location, weather, etc. (My favorite section is “mobs”)

Lastly, I have Paul Otlet (pronounced <ot-LAY>) and his tangible version of the World Wide Web that was crushed before it could really evolve into something useful. Reading his description of the Mundeneum is so eerie, it makes me want to bust out my crystal ball and see what I can come up with, so I can be memorialized 50 years in the future… But I digress. Otlet gathered together as much information as he could on 3×5 cards in order to create a master bibliography. Google Tech Talks has a nice video that discusses Otlet and other forward thinkers. Kevin Kelly over at The Technicum has an amazing post about other forms of punch-card methods of organization. I love that a person must use a glorified knitting needle in order to select the desired cards.