Restoring an old book - GIF

[Floradawg]

As someone who has done this work longer than she's been alive, I say job well done!

Perhaps of historical interest:

(a) The false "hubs" or "bands" she used on the spine (the strips of leather) may or may not have been original. These hubs organically came about from covering a book sewn on cords or bands. In this example neither are used and the spine is naturally flat hence the need for false hubs This also leads to her doing a 'case style' binding (from roughly the industrial revolution timeframe) versus a leather over boards attached to the text block.

(b) The use of a magnesium blocking die to do the gold tooling is very modern. Although brass/copper dies were not unknown, most fine binding of the time was done with individual tools. Each panel between the hubs would show some variation. Imitation gold foil on a roll was not used, but rather genuine gold leaf (although that can be put on a roll as well) involving many more steps not shown.

(c) I could go on, but regardless she's done a nice modern job. She'd never make it as a counterfeiter but it will look great on a bookshelf! And very few people today want to pay 10 times more than what she'd charge just for the sake of historical accuracy.

Are the leaves made of vellum? Since she immersed it in a liquid, I didn't think they were paper.

[Inner]

Are the leaves made of vellum? Since she immersed it in a liquid, I didn't think they were paper.

Yes, paper pages/leaves. Full immersion in water is very common for cleaning or removal. The only catch is that first you need to test any inks on the paper to see if they're water soluble. If they are soluble (they usually are not), you'll need a different procedure.