Sunday, February 15, 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