The Vespiary Book Binding & Book Conservation

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!