The Vespiary Book Binding & Book Conservation

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.