What I Do
Conservation
Conservation work consists of inspecting an item in great detail, understanding its materiality, damage, and needs, and acting to prevent or decelerate further deterioration. This can be done through interventive or preventive conservation. Interventive conservation often involves making changes to the object directly by repairing, supporting, or consolidating elements to stabilise or improve the current condition of the item. This can cover a range of treatments, from removing a minimal amount of surface dirt to dismantling, washing, and resewing the pages of a book and replacing its cover. The extent of interventive treatment is determined in a dialogue between the conservator and the custodian of the object, based on the conservator's judgement, the object's history, and the custodian's future plans for the item. Preventive conservation, on the other hand, focuses on controlling the object's surroundings and so influencing the rate at which chemical and physical changes take place in the object. This can be done by storing the item in appropriate housing, which acts as a protective barrier between the object and external threats like pests, inappropriate handling, light damage, or fluctuating humidity. Alternatively (or ideally, in addition) to boxing, the object's stability can be improved by influencing environmental conditions such as humidity, temperature, storage, and light. Interventive and preventive conservation go hand in hand, and where possible both are employed together to protect an item from chemical and physical (mechanical) deterioration.
Book conservation not only cares for documents like book pages, pamphlets, letters, deeds, or maps, but also looks after the binding or enclosure of these objects. This means that book conservators work with a huge variety of materials, including paper, parchment, leather, textiles, and sometimes wood and metal. The binding of a book can be just as revealing about historical events or practices as the content, and so it is important to preserve the physical evidence for how a book was made or treated throughout its lifetime. Because of this, every conservation treatment is accompanied by detailed photographic and careful written documentation, and any original material that is removed during conservation treatment is kept with the object. As conservators often get to see parts of books that are hidden when the book is intact (like the linings on a book spine, for example), documenting what we encounter is important, as it enables access to hidden information about the provenance of the book.
Bookbinding
Bookbinding skills are necessary to carry out appropriate repairs on historical books. Making historic binding models can be a useful tool to develop these skills while providing a way to understand different book structures through observation and touch. Analysing models allows me to see how mechanisms in the book work, for example how stress or tension is transferred throughout the textblock as it is opened and handled, or where the strengths and weaknesses of a particular structure lie. Bookbinding is also a great way to learn various techniques and practice the hand skills to be able to perform delicate and complex treatments on historic items.
For someone like me, constantly looking for something to do with my hands, bookbinding is a fun activity to explore in my free time and a way to play around in a creative manner. It is always a very satisfying process - starting out with bits of paper, board, maybe some textiles or animal skin, and ending up in a beautiful and practical object.
Bookbinding allows me to explore different cultures and materials, too. When I make historic book structures, I like to imagine the context of the people who invented the styles and passed them on to the modern day. For what purpose were they creating the books? What was their content? How were they decorated? What tools were being used, and which materials? How would earlier binders make their books if they had access to the same materials I use in my work?
The power of inanimate objects to evoke feelings and memories in us is truly remarkable. This feeling is emphasised when I work with materials that are reused from something else, or that were transformed from something completely different. Working with leather and parchment, it can be easy to forget that they were once part of a living animal, and sometimes I need to remind myself of the transformation from skin to material by carefully examining the grain structure of leather and irregularities in the skin. Giving skin a new purpose, one that can outlive the lifespan of the animal it came from by many years, sometimes even centuries, is for me a way to be respectful of its origins.
As part of my MA thesis, I explored ways of processing fish skin to make into parchment. This allowed me to feel more connected to the material's transformation from animal origins. As fish skin is readily available as a waste product from the food industry and can be processed using only natural and environmentally friendly materials, there is lots of room for experimentation. I would love to learn more about papermaking and other crafts like weaving as well, because it would be interesting to create a book completely from scratch. To finish off along those lines, here is a poem about the transformation of flax into a Bible: made of linen rag paper, sewn with linen thread, and covered with the skin of animals which fed on the flax. (If this strikes your fancy, you might enjoy this article).
The Book
by Henry Vaughan
Eternal God! Maker of all
That have lived here since the man's fall:
The Rock of Ages! in whose shade
They live unseen, when here they fade;
Thou knew'st this paper when it was
Mere seed, and after that but grass;
Before 'twas dressed or spun, and when
Made linen, who did wear it then:
What were their lives, their thoughts, and deeds,
Whether good corn or fruitless weeds.
Thou knew'st this tree when a green shade
Covered it, since a cover made,
And where it flourished, grew, and spread,
As if it never should be dead.
Thou knew'st this harmless beast when he
Did live and feed by Thy decree
On each green thing; then slept - well fed -
Clothed with this skin which now lies spread
A covering o'er this aged book;
Which makes me wisely weep, and look
On my own dust; mere dust it is,
But not so dry and clean as this.
Thou knew'st and saw'st them all, and though
Now scattered thus, dost know them so.
O knowing, glorious Spirit! when
Thou shalt restore trees, beasts, and men,
When Thou shalt make all new again,
Destroying only death and pain,
Give him amongst Thy works a place
Who in them loved and sought Thy face!