12/10/2015
Partially dis-bound, with most of its over 1,200 pages damaged and more than 20 pages actually missing, this book was in a sorry state when I first saw it.
The first task was to 'pull it' remove all the binding and stitching, smoothing as many of the creases as possible and repair each folded sheet of text,
A long, slow laborious process but vital if the book was ever to be restored to readable condition.
I also had to source and replace all of the missing leaves in facsimile using machine made, laid paper, which I age toned before printing.
I then had to re-stitch the whole text block which, because of the number of pages, around 1,300 and the way they had been printed, meant that I had to use a fine thread and use what is known as 'two on', a somewhat fiddly process especially on such a large book, but otherwise the effect would have been to produce far too much 'swell', that is the increased thickness of a book at the spine as a result of all the thread used to stitch the book together. Swell is vital to produce a good binding but too much is as bad as too little.
The whole project took several months.
Some time later I was asked to rebind the book, that is put the text block in boards which are then covered and decorated.
In this case because of the size of the book, I thought wooden boards would be most appropriate and so I made a pair of boards and drilled them so that the 'slips' as the cords are known, could be firmly attached.
The book would originally have been bound using the flexible style, that is with the leather stuck to the spine, allowing the 'raised cords' to show through onto the spine in that characteristic fashion. The problem with this sort of binding is that by its very nature the spine must crease as the book is opened, the larger the book, the more severe the creasing which would very quickly destroy any titling. I therefore decided on a compromise. The book was conventionally bound with the slips attached through the wooden boards but then I created a false spine complete with ‘bands’ to match the raised cords. This was then stuck to the piece of leather chosen to cover the boards. At this stage I lettered the spine using single letters in a large font, 'blind tooled', that is I used hot stamps but without gilding, to form a pleasing relief effect.
This gave the binding the strength of a traditional flexible binding but with the aesthetic advantages of a hollow-back spine allowing the book to be opened flat without creasing to the spine.
Another compromise was the ‘headband’ I would have liked to create a colourful strengthening piece for the top of the spine but the irregularity of the page edges made this impossible so rather than crop the book to form a uniform but unnatural looking look to the pages edges I chose instead to attach another cord through the top, spine corners of the boards, channelling back the board to recess the cord it so that it would lay flat. This then provides a strong but flexible support for the turned over leather forming the cap of the spine.
Then I covered the boards and spine with the leather, which I only 'pared' the process of shaving the inner layers of the leather to make it thinner and more flexible, to the corners to maintain strength. Many leather bindings, especially Victorian and Edwardian ones were very decorative and remarkably flexible but the leather was pared to excess, so lost almost all its strength and as a result few of these bindings have stood the test of time.
Then I added the endpapers and pastedowns, choosing a heavy, dark green paper with green cloth hinges for flexibility. An additional decoration was added by tipping in copies of two of the maps from Speed’s ‘Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine’ 1611-1612 ‘ ‘THE KINGDOME OF GREAT BRITAINE AND IRELAND’ to the front and ‘BRITAIN AS IT WAS DEVIDED in the tyme of the Enghfhe-Saxons efecially during their Heptarchy’ to the rear.
Finally I tooled the leather on the boards, the rear board I blind decorated using a decorative ‘roll’ with thistle for Stuart and Tudor Rose stamps in the corners. I repeated this design on the front cover but added the complete list of rulers of Britaine (sic) as given by Speed from Romans all the way through to King James.
An interesting and satisfying project which should see the book through for another couple of centuries.
