Featured Old book for restoration

Thank you, @Ex Libris . People collect such fascinating things sometimes, and your interest is fascinating, imo.

 

Wonderful knowledge, Ex.

 

Some news on the restoration. I have visited 2 restoration companies. The first one was a more artisan one. She did not have much time and told me a full restoration of the book would cost much more then my budget. In the end she did not want to do it, because of personal circumstances.

Then I visited another restaurator in a nearby town (Helmond), this is a much larger one, They made me an offer on the following restorations:

- Cleaning
- Solidify the pages of the first and last gathering/section/quire
- Restore the sewing support/band
- Restore the headband/endband


- Placing a new spine/back
- Restore the leather binding


All together a quite extensive restoration of the book, that will cost me a bit more then I have thought, but I agreed. They could not say when it will be finished yet.

This restoration does cost more then I have payed for the book itself and I am not sure if from a monetary point of view this will pay out. From a historical perspective with this restoration I have saved this book from further decline, so it will last for another few hundred years. That is in my opinion more important than the value of the book itself. I don't want to sell the book anyway.

 

For the old book lovers I have an interesting document to share. It is written in Dutch, but it contains lots of very useful pictures and translations of all the book terms in Dutch, French, German and English. At the end of this document there is an index of all the terms in the different languages.

https://www.kb.nl/sites/default/files/docs/kneep_en_binding_digitaal_20080410.pdf

 

I'm sure I would make the same decision.

 

It is a difficult decision for me, for the same money I could buy another very cool book...

 

The book will be ready at July the 18th, so I will collect it at Wednesday July the 22nd.

 

The book is back from restoration. I am happy with the result .

 

Looks like nice conservation-quality work, using appropriate materials while interfering as little as possible with the remains of the original binding.
Thanks for showing us!

 

Very nice -- Thanks for sharing!