Conservation Work at the APS

During the past four weeks I've been interning at the American Philosophical Society Library doing some conservation and preservation work. One of the projects I've been working on is a full restoration of a book; the process is shown here below. I have two weeks left at the APS before returning back to UArts for the final year of my MFA. It's a little frightening to write that last statement...but I'll keep you updated of my progress.

cheers,
AB




before & after










After tearing out the sewing and essentially, ripping the book apart from what's left of its binding, the first step is to dry-clean the pages. This process involves taking each individual page and rubbing it down with eraser crumbs.


before
dry-cleaning
after

After dry-cleaning then comes washing. I soaked the pages in deionized water (with slight agitation), drain, and repeat until the water comes through clear.



I repaired any corners that were torn with Seikishu Japanese paper and paste

Preparing my station to guard the pages

The pages that were printed with plates were separated and sewn together with a whip-stitch, rather than in folios. In order to have a consistent binding I need to guard the "plates" together to form a folio.



After all the pages were guarded and press, the book was sewn back together with a "Piano Hinge" binding, seen below. The cover material is made from Tyvek, which I dyed with Acrylic based inks.


Slap a label on it, make a nice looking clam-shell box and viola!


With most of the books that we work with at the APS our goal is to keep the integrity of the original book as much as possible. In cases such as this one, where the binding cannot be salvaged (and for learning purposes) we'll put it in a modern binding and box in order to preserve what's left of it.


good stuff, lots of fun, more to come...