The Restoration of Leather Bindings

With this binding, I only have photographs of the gold finishing. The book was started several years ago and I finally finished it in May of this year. It was sewn on four tapes with a hollow back spine, silk endbands, leather hinges and covered in a Hewit tan goatskin.

The book was Bernard Middleton’s The Restoration of Leather Bindings, originally purchased in sheets. This book had many drawings throughout and I used two of these drawings for the cover design.

I enlarged the drawings from the book and then redrew them so the curves would match the tools I have. I own a half set of designer gouges (even nos.), a set of blending gouges and a set of line pallets all 1.5 pt thickness from P&S Engraving.

To do this, I used an ink stamping pad and went over the drawing with the different tools, noting which ones went where on the drawing. To help determine which gouges will work, I have a sheet where I have used the gouges to make larger arcs on tracing paper so I can lay it over the drawing to find the right tool for a given curve. The image on the front cover took eight different tools while the back cover took sixteen.

With both drawings there were small lines about a 2 mm and 4mm long and my shortest line tool was 5 mm so I made two new line tools using brass rod set into a dowel handle. I also made a small curve about 2.5 mm wide.

I have written about making tools in an article for The Bonefolder Journal, volume 5, number 2, Spring 2009 which can be downloaded at-

http://www.philobiblon.com/bonefolder/vol5no2contents.htm

I worked on one side of the cover at a time and made my final two drawings on a thin Japanese paper. I attached the drawings on the book by wrapping the paper around the book and taping on a second strip that wraps up over the book. I used dividers to check that the drawing was placed squarely on the book.

The first tooling on the leather was done with a warm tool through the paper pattern. After I went over the entire drawing I lifted up part of the drawing and checked to see if anything was missed. I kept the drawing taped in place in case I needed to go over any missed areas. When all was checked, I removed the paper drawing.

The second tooling of the image was done with warm tools with the leather dry to deepen the impressions in the leather. That way I could straighten out lines and make corrections if needed. For the third tooling of the image I dampened an area with a wet sponge and allowed the water to soak in for a moment and then tooled the impression with a warm tool. This wet tooling with warm tools hardens and deepens the impression.

After the wet tooling was done and the book dried, I painted the glaire into the impressions with a fine brush. I used a #00 liner brush and B.S. Glaire, a shellac-based glaire, and brushed two coats into the impressions. Then I waited an hour for the glaire to dry between coats.

To begin working with the gold leaf I laid out two leaves of gold on top of one another on the gold cushion and cut them to size. Using sweet almond oil I rubbed over an area of the cover I want to tool. Oil helps in handling and holding the gold in place while you tool it.

I used a piece of cotton wool and rubbed it against my face to pick up a small amount of natural oil. Then I rolled the cotton over the gold leaf to pick up the gold off the cushion. The oil on the cotton pad is very slight but it does pick up the gold and then when it is laid on the book where the sweet almond oil has been rubbed on the leather, the gold will stay in place.

Pressing the cotton on the gold a second time with a quick down and up motion pushes the gold into the tool impressions. This helps me see where to place the tool for the next tooling.

I went over the gold covered areas with warm tools using the heat of the tool to adhere the gold to the leather with the glaire in the tooled lines. I have a gold rubber that I rub over the loose gold leaf to pick up the extra gold. I then grease up the next area and lay more gold and continue tooling. After I have gone over the image I repeat the whole process two or three times building up the layers of gold in the tooled lines.

Faults and breaks in the gold may require some small areas to have glaire painted in again and then lay down the gold and retool.

After tooling, the edges of the lines are cleaned up with a sharpened wooden stick, in this case an orange stick used for manicures. The tooling of the gold and cleaning up of the impression takes several hours for each side.

For the titling of this book, I tried several different sizes of type and arrangements using the ink stamping pad and a lettering pallet.

As with the cover drawings I made a pattern on Japanese paper that I used for the first tooling.

I did the title in sections that would fit into my 4 inch pallet.

The first tooling through the paper pattern.

The third tooling with damp leather and warm type

Placing the gold for the first layer of gold leaf.

This book is to be my working copy for restoration work on bindings which is why it often got set aside and took years for it to be completed. I was looking forward to having it on my bookshelf, so of course the first thing I did was send it to England for a binding exhibition. It will be on display at the Society of Bookbinders' 17th Biennial Education & Training Conference at the University of Warwick.

The Dreamtime

This binding was done on the book "The Dreamtime" by Charles P. Mountford, printed in 1968. The book is about Australian aboriginal myths and includes drawings and paintings by Ainslie Roberts.

I was quietly taken by the painting and the colors the artist used and built my design for the binding based on an illustration for the origin of fire story. I changed the shape and placement of the rocks and made a drawing of the design to size.



The book was bound in a green cloth case binding which I removed then disbound the pages.



The pages had 12 holes punched for the original machine sewing; I used five of the holes for three recessed cords and the kettle stitches for sewing the book. I used two pieces of 18/8 thread for the recessed cords.



After sewing I added several sheets of plain bond paper folded into two sections that were equal to the thickness of a leather hinge. A section was tipped in with PVA along the spine of the book in the front and back of the sewn textblock. They will be removed later when the leather hinges are pasted in. I glued up the spine with PVA and rounded and backed the book. The page edges were then sanded smooth.



Headbands were sewn with two colors of silk thread on a flax cord and the spine was lined with two layers of bond paper that I sanded between layers to give a smooth surface to the spine.

The boards for the binding were made of .080 Davey board lined with a bond paper to help stabilize them and were shaped by sanding the edge along the top, bottom and foreedge and were laced onto the book. I added a one on two off hollow and the final lining was a piece of Stonehenge paper with the edges beveled and sanded before being glued down to the hollow.

For the design I need to create a darkening sky so I started with a yellow goatskin from Harmatan and cut it to a rough size. Using the aniline dyes from Hewitt mixed with water I begin brushing the dye on the damped leather. I kept the areas broad without trying to worry about details at first. When the leather was dry the color was not dark enough so I repeated the process. Some areas of the skin did not take the dye as well as others so when the skin was almost dry I stippled dye over to darken these areas.



The design centered on fire leaping across the sky and I decided feathered onlays would give the edge quality I wanted for the flames. A feathered onlay is pared for the face of the leather scraping off a very thin layer with the edges broken up by cutting through the grain of the leather.

Previously when I had tried feathered onlays I used my paring knife to pare off the pieces. I had also seen a photo in Philip Smith’s books showing him using a spokeshave. I tried both and got random shapes but for this design I needed to control the shapes more.





I had also tried using my Scharf-Fix to feather onlays and I thought if I could raise the leather in the shape I needed, the blade would shear it off the leather. I took a sheet of Mylar and traced the shapes with a marking pen from my drawing. Using blue painters tape, I placed two layers of tape on the backside of the Mylar. I then cut out the shape with a pair of scissors.





I cut the yellow leather into one inch strips, the width of the cutting area on the Scharf-Fix and thinned them down to about .5 mm thickness (about half of the thickness of the leather). I peeled the tape away from the Mylar and put it on the back of the leather. Then with the flesh side up I ran it through the Scharf-Fix set at a height equal to the thickness of the leather. When it hit the tape the leather was pushed up into the blade.





I used a photocopy of the drawing and cut out the shapes of the flames to guide where to glue down the onlays. Using PVA and paste I glued the feathered onlay on the cover leather and put them under a weight to dry.

For the rock onlays I used the more traditional technique for onlays. I thinly pared light tan leather and using another photocopy of the drawing cut the shapes out of the leather. I then used the dyes to tone and shape the rocks. After they were dry, I edge pared the pieces and glued them on to the cover leather.

At this time I dyed areas on the cover to darken and to add shadows to some of the fire shapes so the image appeared more 3-dimensional.



After everything had dried I took the leather and using my spokeshave to back pare the leather so the onlays would recess into to the thickness of the leather and be level with the rest of the skin.



I went over the binding boards, smoothing down the areas around where the cords laced into them, notched the board corners at the head and tail and slit the tube for the leather turn ins. I then capped up the book and trimmed the leather to its final size and pared the edges.

I used paste to adhere the leather to the binding being careful not to over wet the front of the leather. After the leather was on and had dried I allowed the binding to sit out for a day to see if the boards pulled. I then added a piece of Iowa B9 flax paper in the inside of both board to balance the pull of the leather.

I dyed two strips of leather for the hinges and trimmed and pared them to size. I removed the false sections I had tipped in the front and back section after sewing and then pasted in the hinges. After the hinges had dried I trimmed them out. I had over pared the leather around the top headcap and on the back board had a gap at the turn in. I dampened the leather and lifted up the pieces and pared a patch to fit, then pasted everything back down.




When beginning the dark tooling I had a copy of the drawing near by and lightly marked the dry leather first with a small bone folder as a guide before tooling. This leaves a light impression on the soft leather and if I am not happy with the line it could be removed by dampening the leather and then letting it dry.

The tooling on the image was done free hand with my brass stylus, first the tool was heated and used on the dry leather and then the impressions were tooled again with the tool heated after wetting the lines with a small brush with water. Heat and moisture will darken the line and make it permanent.



S. A. Neff designed the brass stylus I used. There is another type--often called an Ascona tool--first used by Hugo Peller. He designed the tool to make a wide tooled line into which he could place a fine onlay of white leather. There is also a earlier description in 1892, Sarah Prideaux using a dash tool from a set of hand letters that she shaped into a stylus tool and used in a free hand manner.

I have an ascona style tool but prefer the Neff design. It can be made from a brass rod set into a wooden dowel handle. After shaping with files the edge can be smoothed with fine sandpaper and given a final polish on a leather strop and polishing compound.

S.A. Neff made a presentation of this tool and how he uses it at the GBW Standards Meeting in 2001. There is an article by Neff published in the GBW Journal in Vol. XXXIX No. 1 and also video available from Guild of Book Workers.

I took a workshop from Neff several years ago and now use this tool regularly.

I am holding the Neff stylus and below is an Ascona tool.



This shows the shape of the Neff stylus tip from two angles.

With the tooling done I used Hewit’s Leather dressing to seal the dyed leather.



The title was done with 14 point Garamond type using a hand pallet and done in gold leaf. I started with a paper pattern and then blinded in the title. Then I used B.S. glair and laid on the gold and tooled it in.



The endpapers were made from some paste paper I had made last year,





This book was juried into the Marking Time Exhibition sponsored by the Guild of Book Workers and will travel to several different locations over the next two years. The first location is at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the exhibition opens May 15 and runs until August 15. More information about the exhibit can be found at

http://www.guildofbookworkers.org/events/exhibits.php

WATER

When I see a design binding I carefully look at the design and details of the piece and often find myself stopping and thinking how did they do that? I will look over an area where the last time I worked on a book I struggled a bit and wonder if they had similar problems. So I am posting the details of how I did a particular binding. Successes and failures and the way mistakes were handled.



Water is a book commissioned by Designer Bookbinders and printed by Incline Press for an international bookbinding competition set for June of 2009. A group of the books where sold unbound or “in sheets” to binders through out the world at a cost of 100 GBP (approx. $200). Then binders had about 10 months to complete the bindings and send them back to England for judging.

The text is made of short poems and prose with the theme of water giving a wide range for designing the binding. I began by looking for materials and ideas for the design. I first worked on a drawing of a shore line of a lake with a circular ripple going across the water. I had just purchased some hand dyed fabric from Ghana that had blues and dark oranges with a pattern that I felt would suggest water movement. I thought this could be used as a cloth doublure. I had blue and terra cotta goatskins from Harmatan that worked with the cloth.

I worked on the drawing for some time but was not happy so I kept redrawing and began the sewing and binding of the pages. It was sewn on flattened cords that were laced onto the covers. The covers were made of .080 Davey board lined with a bond paper to help stabilize them. I wanted leather hinges so I added several sheets of plain bond paper folded in a section that was equal to the thickness of the leather hinge. A section was tipped in with PVA along the spine of the book in the front and back of the sewn textblock. They will be removed later when the hinges are pasted in.

The top edge of the pages were trimmed slightly, scraped and sanded smooth for decorating with the other edges left with their uneven deckle and torn edges. For the edge decoration I cut out several sizes of circles of blue low tack painters tape. I used a Japanese hole drill for this. I placed a few circle on the edge and then splattered acrylic paint along the edge. Placed more circles and splattered again. I used yellow, burnt orange and two blues to build up the color. As I began removing the circles not all stood out enough so I traced around the taped circles with a prisma colored pencil before removing them. The design was to suggest bubbles in water.

The headband was sewn with blue and light brown silk threads on a single core.



Water-drops, drips, ripples, splashes and waves. I started looking for new ideas. My lake image never came to be. I keep coming back to waves. I drew out a design that I liked and then redrew it many times to fit the book. As the binding continued I made a plaquette to begin working out the design. A plaquette is a practice board covered in the same leather and other materials you are using on your binding.

I had in mind a fabric doublure within a recessed frame on the inside boards. I did this frame with heavy card stock glued around the edge of the back of the plaquette. I pared an oversized turn in to cover the raised frame.

With the plaquette I first tried tooling the drawing. I used Sid Neff’s technique of cutting a pattern out of 3 ply Bristol board and then tracing along the edge with a brass stylus.



Because the stylus is drawn along the pattern piece tooling with leaf cannot be done. This movement of drawing across the leaf would tear it. Foils can be used with this technique because of the Mylar layer protects the foil when transferring it with the heated tool. I used a silver foil on the plaquette. I was happy with the basic design but not with the look of the foil work. I then tried airbrushing white highlights on the waves but still I was not happy. Back to the drawing board.



I made another plaquette where I tried raising the design by applying 1 ply mat board pieces. Then I covered the piece in leather (.06 mm split skin) and used dense foam to press the leather into the relief design. I pressed the damp pasted out leather onto the plaquette in a nipping press for 10 minutes then removed the piece and worked over areas with a Teflon folder to sharpen the edges in areas and then did the turn ins.



The boards for the binding were shaped by sanding the edge along the top, bottom and foreedge and laced onto the book. The spine was lined and a one on two off hollow was added. The final lining was a piece of Stonehenge paper with the edges beveled and sanded before being glued down to the hollow.

The drawing was redone to work better with cut shape and the pieces were cut out and applied to the cover. The crests of the waves are the highest point and were built up with additional pieces of mat board under the main shape. I tore the edges of these built up pieces to taper the edge then sand the edge to have a gentle rise to the piece.





Where the raised pieces crossed the spine I tapered them to end at the joint so the thickness would not prevent the book from fully opening.



I went over the covers smoothing down the areas around where the cords laced into the boards, notched the board corners at the head and tail and slit the tube for the leather turn ins. I then capped up the book and began preparing the leather.

The leather was cut to size with the turn ins oversized (1 3/4 inch) so the leather would cover the frame area on the inside of the boards. The turn ins were pared thinner using an Scharfix with the paring done flat without a bevel so the areas covering the frame would be even.

This photo shows the set up in the press. The book is supported from below with a pressboard held in place by a weight on the shelf under my press. I use compressed foam along with pressboards to give more even pressure across the uneven surface. This will be the set up when I press the leather over the design



To cover the book I used the German technique of attaching the leather in sections. This is described in Bookbinding & Conservation by Hand, by Laura S. Young I first damped the whole skin with a sponge and pasted out the spine area letting the paste absorb in and then brushed the spine area of the book with paste. I had marked out the position of the book on the flesh side of the leather before pasting so I could center the book when covering. After I had the leather in place and rubbed down along the spine I placed the book in a finishing press with the sides of the unattached leather draped over the press. I then carefully worked the damp leather over the raised areas across the spine. I then let it dry for a few hours.



I pasted up one side of the leather at a time and used a foam pad with pressboards in my nipping press to attach the leather to the cover. After pressing I worked over the edges of the raised areas with a Teflon folder.



I finished the second side and then opened the book to set the joints. The back cover opened well but when I opened the front cover the leather puckered and popped away from the front joint, I had not pulled the leather tight enough across the joint when covering.

I quickly damped the front of the leather across the board and along the joint and carefully pulled the leather off the front board. I flatted out the leather and repasted and waited for it so soften up a little. I scraped off the paste and repasted with a thin fresh layer and recovered the board. I had to keep the joint tight but not stretch out the leather. I pressed again and worked over the design and opened the cover to set the joint and it looked much better.

I did not turn the leather over the edges of the book at this time but let the book dry over night. I pressed the book between the foam under some pressure for the first few hours to make sure the leather would not shrink and pull away from the raised areas. Then layered the cover with soft felt and pressed with a lighter weight over night. Through all this process of covering I used heavy Mylar sheets between the cover and the text block so the moisture would not enter into the pages and cause cockling of the paper.

After the book was dry I checked to see how the leather molded around the raised area and double check how the board opened and if there where areas where the leather detached from the book. The alignment of the leather on the front cover was a little off from pulling it back off and re covering but over all things were good.

I then dampened the edges of the leather with water. After allowing a few minutes for the water to soak in I pasted up the edges and finished the edges and endcaps. I allowed to book to sit out for several days to see if there was any pull on the covers. There was a slight pull on the boards but I decided to do the leather hinge first before correcting it in case things changed.

The extra sections added to allow space for the leather hinges were removed and the hinge area was cleaned out of any left over glue or leftover paper. The leather was cut and pared to size allowing extra with to cover the inside edge of the frame. I removed the false sections and cleaned the hinge area of any left over glue and paper. The leather hinges were cut and pared to size allowing extra width to cover the inside edge of the frame





After several more days of drying the slight warping of the boards was the next issue to fix.



I trimmed out the leather and cut a piece of flax paper (University of Iowa B9) I knew would have a good counter pull to the leather on the boards. The paper was cut about a 1/4 inch smaller than the opening. I sprayed the paper lightly with water to allow it to expand with the moisture and then glued it up with PVA. I stretched the paper within the opening and then put Mylar sheets inside the covers and pressed the book overnight. The following day I removed the book and set it out with the boards open to continue drying and to see if they would stay flat.

As I looked at the overall look of the design of the cover I felt the waves needed to stand out more. I took the plaquette and tried to sand away the top edges of the leather exposing the light color below to highlight areas. I did not like the look so I darkened the areas behind the wave, which I liked more.

Using a paper copy trimmed slightly smaller and blue low tack painter’s tape I mocked out the waves. I then air brushed the background just above the waves using acrylic paint.







For the title I tried several different type styles and sizes. When I found the one I liked I foiled stamped it on to a piece of Mylar that I used to locate where to hand tool the title.







I then made a paper pattern of the lettering and placed it on the book. I first tooled through the pattern and then removed the pattern and retooled the impression. I was a little shaky and left a double impression on one of the ends. I dampened the area to see it the impression would soften out. It lessened but I had to dampen and carefully work over the area again. I then retooled with entire impression with a warm tool while the leather was damp.

After glaring the impression and placing the aluminum leaf I heated up my lettering pallet. When I picked up the pallets I accidentally touched the printers type to the hot stove and melted the edge of the letters. I noticed the type when I checked it to see if it was right side up. At this pint I cursed many times and had to clean up and put things away. I was too upset to finish.





Feeling more calm the next day I reset the type and finished the title. After this I decided to buy some brass type to replace the printers type I was using. Next time there should be fewer problems doing a short title on a book.

I sanded smooth the inside frame for the doublure. I tried using the cloth on the first plaquette I made but again was not happy with the result. The frame area was not deep enough and since the book did not have any of the terra cotta leather the cloth no longer went with the rest of the design.



I went through all my decorative papers, but nothing looked right. I went to my favorite art store Wet Paint and found a Japanese chiyogami paper. I finished pasting in the doublure and flyleaves and let the book dry for a few days under a lightweight.