Kristi Westberg's Conservation Portfolio: February 2009

Cloth Reback

The Welsh Harper was a music book which arrived in very poor condition. The first two sections were loose and dirty, the endpapers were covered in adhesive and torn, the spine was missing and self-adhesive faux leather corners had been attached to cover rodent damage.

View of The Welsh Harper before conservation

View of The Welsh Harper after conservation; work included resewing the textblock, attaching a new cloth flange, lining the spine with leather, tinting a new cloth spine and reconstructing the case by slotting in the new spine under the lifted cloth on the upper and lower boards.

View of upper board endpaper before conservation

View of upper board endpaper after conservation: tinted Japanese paper was used to reattach the pastedown and fly together.

View of the rodent eaten corner after the faux leather corners were removed

View of the corner after conservation: the corner was reconstructed using thin pieces of blotter and Japanese paper

View after conservation was completed in new clam shell box

Slipcase Conservation

Saxby's Patent Spherograph is a nautical tool used in circular sailing. The majority of the damage was in the slipcase, however a small instruction booklet was also damaged from being crushed by the other parts of the instrument.

View of the spherograph and all its parts before conservation

View of the spherograph after conservation including a new enclosure for the instruction booklet. By making an enclosure the same size as the other parts of the spherograph the instruction booklet was no longer vulnerable to falling to the bottom of the slipcase and being crushed.

View of the bottom right hand corner of the slipcase before conservation

View of the bottom right hand corner after conservation: a new corner was built up using several layers of handmade paper followed by a layer of tinted Japanese paper.

View of the bottom right hand corner of the slipcase before conservation

View of the bottom right corner after conservation: the corner was built up using handmade paper followed by tinted Japanese paper.

Joint between left hand wall and back board of slipcase before conservation

Repaired joint between the left hand wall and backboard of slipcase

Box Making

After being damaged from use this Salvador Dali souvenir catalogue from the Julien Levy Gallery, New York was in need of a custom box to allow the object to be viewed with minimal handling.

Image of the Dali catalogue in need of a new box

Object in clam shell box with removal instructions on top

Catalogue on support board allowing the user to view the object without handling

Vellum Binding Conservation

The following set of images show the conservation of a 1700 full vellum binding.

Spine of book before conservation: upon receipt no spine was present leaving the textblock vulnerable to damage

Upper board and endpaper before conservation: due to the missing spine the endpapers were acting as the only method of attachment between the textblock and the case. This stress had caused the fold of the endpaper to stretch and break.

View of spine after conservation: a new vellum spine was measured, shaped and attached to the spine by slotting the new vellum under the lifted vellum of the upper and lower boards.

Upper board and endpaper after conservation: once the new spine was attached a Japanese paper hinge was pasted to the fold of the endpaper for added support.

Book Models

The following is a set of book models made during my two years of study at West Dean College.

Limp Vellum Binding

Traditional Springback Account Book

View of Open Springback

Quarter Leather Binding with False Bands

Quarter Vellum Binding

Photo Album Leather Spine

Full Leather Binding

MA Work

The title of my MA studies was: Conservation of Mechanical Books: An investigation in the tensile strength of adhesives and repairs to coated and uncoated papers. As a part of the study I created a set of sample cards demonstrating a variety of movements commonly found in pop-up books. The following is a sampling of movements created during this study.