Mirror with Ornaments of Papier-mâché or Wood-Paste.
ON REPAIRING AND RESTORING BOOKS, MANUSCRIPTS, AND PAPERS
WITH DIRECTIONS FOR EASY BINDING AND PAPER-MENDING—BOOK-WORMS
It happens often enough that some valuable old manuscript or early printed work, if not destroyed as useless, is sold for a trifle because it is torn and worm-eaten or otherwise injured. The loss to literature from this cause has been terrible, and it is all the more so because in most cases it was the result of sheer ignorance.
Paper is a composition of linen, cotton, or other vegetable fibre reduced to powder and then combined with size, which is a kind of glue, paste, or binding medium. Therefore paper can be mended by using, in the soft, macerated, or pasty form, paper itself—which very simple fact appears to have been hitherto a secret from the greater portion of mankind. That is to say, having a piece of paper with a small round hole in it—looking as if some one had fired a shot through it—take another piece of paper of the same quality and reduce some of it to a very fine powder or mash it fine with a knife, combine it with good flour-paste infused with a little clear white glue, and make a soft paste with the powder; then, laying a porcelain tile or piece of tin under the sheet, with a hole in it, to prevent sticking, spread the paste, which is really soft paper, with a knife over the hole. When dry it will be mended permanently. Observe that the pulp must be a fine paste, not merely paper mixed with paste—i.e., lumpy and stringy, but soft. Secondly, that a better “binder” or size than flour-paste is one made from scraps of parchment boiled, till all the gelatine is extracted. Take the latter and let it boil till thick. It makes a finely glazed surface.
Do not begin to do this with a book, but with a sheet out of which holes have been punched. It is delicate work, and you must not expect to succeed in it at once. But in time, with care, you will remake the paper with great skill. There are workmen who can even reunite torn edges in this manner so that the mending is almost imperceptible. This is remaking paper with paper. In some cases it will suffice to simply neatly paste a piece of paper over a torn-away space. This may be done—as in most cases—very clumsily, or it may be performed artistically and daintily. In the latter case, using a very sharp and specially thin bladed penknife, shave down or scrape away the overlapping edge, and apply the paste sparingly with the point of a camel’s-hair small brush. Before it is quite dry lay the leaf on a smooth, hard surface, and with the penknife or a burnisher flatten down the thinned edge to an uniform surface. This also requires a little practice, but when learned the artist may effect miracles of restoration. One may, and that not infrequently, buy for shillings books which when mended sell for many pounds.
It often happens that we find some curious little old book which has been sadly cut or worn, almost down to the type. Take it, and with a flat rule carefully cut out every page, leaving just a little rim of margin. Then having obtained old paper corresponding to your text, or good modern hand-made Dutch, using strong glue-paste or flour and gum-arabic, or paper-paste, make borders, on which paste the old pages. If you have old paper—there are dealers who can supply it—you may do this so well that the juncture will be hardly perceptible. In any case you will greatly enhance the value of the book. In this, as in all such work, never attempt to restore anything of value till you shall have succeeded by experimenting. This is very seldom done, and yet books thus restored sell for a price which must make the work very profitable. One reason, however, why we see so little of it is the extravagant price charged for all such work by the agent who supplies it.
The prices paid for books thus restored and mounted are extremely high, simply because there are so few people who know how to do it well; and yet, as any of my readers may find, the art is an easy one, requiring only neatness and care. There are very few libraries where such restorers might not be employed, to the very great profit of the collection. All purchasers for libraries are continually rejecting books because they are tattered and worn or “holey,” which could be sent to the hospital and doctored into value. And it is, indeed, to be regretted for the sake of the public that our great libraries have not all shops attached where duplicates and damaged rarities restored could be sold at fair, not fancy, prices. For it is firstly the great librarian who sees and rejects the most books, and who could do an immense amount of good, and greatly stimulate an interest in collection and literature—and make money—if he would also facilitate acquisition. The art of restoring and of mending is as yet so much in its infancy, and is so little understood and practised, that there is not one book in a thousand, even of rariora and curiosa, preserved as it might be.
It may be worth while to lay some stress on the fact that many persons, especially women, if they will take a little pains to experiment, can easily make a living by thus restoring books and injured documents. There are, indeed, many other means of earning money indicated in this work.
A cheap and durable varnish specially made for bookbinders is prepared as follows:—Take coarsely powdered gum-copal, add to it oil of thyme (oleum thymi serpilli) or pure oil of rosemary (oleum rosmarini), sufficient to form a solution. Pour off the superfluous liquid, and mix the remainder with sufficient alcohol to dissolve it well. In making take only so much of the oil of thyme or rosemary as will cover the copal, and of alcohol about eight or ten parts to the whole. Special varnishes, and perhaps better, are known to many bookbinders, who will sell them, or inform you where to obtain them. I know of none so good as that of Soehnée, which is, however, very expensive, costing about ninepence per ounce. It is rather brittle, however, for pictures.