Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: booksellers (Page 80 of 92)

Out of surgery…

Since I made such a fuss about taking a sharp blade to the old book, I thought it might warrant an update. It isn’t completely finished, but the major work is done, and the patient appears to be headed for a complete recovery.

A lot of the rebinding jobs require a little destruction before the repair can begin, and this book was no exception. For me – particularly if I am not the book’s owner – that part is nerve-racking. The idea of cutting the covers from a book is distressing, even if I know they’ll be back on soon enough. (If you missed the earlier episode, here is a link to the image and article when the boards were removed.)

I get anxious about altering a volume, too.

One book was so out of whack that it required putting a new edge on the pages. It also cleans up the discoloration that happens to the visible paper edge over time. But to put a book under the guillotine constitutes an action that can’t be reversed. This old book would have benefited from trim, but will retain its antique look better with the discolored paper offsetting the new leather and marbled paper binding.

At any rate, the image shows the facelift.

There are no binding supply stores in the area, at least none that I am aware of – so I have to get the things I need from the internet. Marbled paper is an art form, and each sheet is created individually by gently placing the paper on a layer of paint that has been floated on a pan of water. The designs are created by using coordinated colors which are swirled with a small tool or pin, or simply dripped or gently poured onto the water surface. (Paint floats.)

At one time I found an artist in the US that was making paper and selling it on the internet, but the large sheet from which this was taken came from Israel. Another sheet came from a paper artist in Germany. I’m not buying overseas to be exotic, I just find one that I like and then contact the seller.

Attaching a finishing page to the interior of the boards will complete the project, and have this little one-owner back on the road for another century or so.

There are plenty of books here that don’t need repairs, so come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main Street, Broken Arrow OK

Cosmetic surgery, 200 years later…

Here’s what I’m thinking about, with an Exacto-knife in my hand. I’m slicing off a layer of dried leather and glue, trying to cut as thin as possible so I won’t damage the paper underneath. And here’s what’s going through my mind…

A little over two hundred years ago, another fellow was carefully applying glue to the same part of the book, that same glue that I’m trying to remove. I’m thinking about him, working in his bookbindery, applying the skills that he acquired as an apprentice, working in whatever light was slipping through the window – or maybe, working late by candlelight – to artfully connect two leather-covered boards to protect the fragile paper pages of a just-published book.

How old are you? If you’re in your early thirties – or older – and could be transported back into its time, the Declaration of Independence would have been written in your lifetime. This book was first put together in 1807, in America’s first generation of freedom from English rule.

Thinking on it, I’m pretty sure that – while I’m thinking about him and his work – it never crosses his mind that another person will come along behind him to repair damages to his product, his book.

It certainly wasn’t his fault.

In fact, as the book was presented to me, I could appreciate the beautiful leather covering the outer boards. Unfortunately, the hinges – that part of the book that takes all the punishment every time the volume is opened up to read – did not fair so well. One was being held on by a piece of linen tape after being completely loosened from the book. The other was still hanging on like a loose tooth in the mouth of a seven-year-old.

The job ahead of me? Take as little apart as necessary from a book that has survived more than two centuries, and put it back together in an artful style that will do credit to the original binder and preserve the book – hopefully – for another two hundred-plus years.

Man.

I shouldn’t think about it like that. Don’t need the pressure.

It’s enough that the book’s owner has entrusted it to me to return it to him in a condition that is not only better than it was when dropped off, but nice enough that he can show off the book as part of his collection.

And me? Just a practical bookbinder.

These are the adventures.

In January of 1807, the year this book was first put together, every street and alleyway in every neighborhood of the world was dark after sunset – except Pall Mall in London, where gas lighting had just been installed. Ludwig von Beethoven had his 4th Symphony performed for the first time. Slave trade was abolished in the US and England, at least by vote. Robert Fulton got his steamboat out on the water and proved its worth. It was in that same year that this little book was under the hands of a bookbinder with greater skills than I possess, who was finishing off a product destined for the hands of someone wealthy enough to own a book.

Things have changed since then.

Not just the ability to own a book, either. Those years of apprenticeship in learning the bookbinding skills are less necessary. What I know was learned from Youtube videos and some practice.

There is some respect in there, too.

I love books. That ought to be obvious. A book in the trashcan is either a cardinal sin or an act of decency, like euthanizing a crippled thoroughbred. Working to repair or restore a book is just part of my passion. But I’m not an Old World bookbinder.

We’ll see how it turns out, but for now, scraping the old glue and leather from the spine of this one has me thinking. I have a lot of respect for the person who put this together. I don’t want to screw it up.

I have no time to think about how long my repair will hold up, and whether someone will come along in another one-or-two-hundred years to scrape away the evidence of this evening’s book-surgery, after what I hope will be a successful outcome. There aren’t any guarantees, anyway. The current owner might drop it in a puddle of water after walking out of the store. I’m giving my best effort, damn the Kindles. It’s a nice little book and deserves whatever life-extension I can give it…

Come visit! There are plenty of old (and not so old!) books to look over!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
122 South Main Street
Broken Arrow, OK 74012

Book’em Danno.

Books have been written about plots and counterplots, conspiracies, and terrorist attacks. I have shelves lined with them. Books have been written, both factual and those built from the imaginations of their authors.

Whether the young men accused in the Boston Marathon bombing are guilty of executing that event, or not, is a matter for the courts, at least for the surviving brother. Without question, they have already been tried in some corners of the media. Other corners will assume them innocent on grounds that authority figures will resort to any measures to bring about a conclusion, including fabricating evidence to support charges.

What cannot be denied is this: we are living in a world consumed with immediacy, social connectivity, and the capability for relentless recording and dissemination of video.

Whether we agree with the practice or not, we – as citizens – have events of our daily lives recorded with remarkable regularity. Look up at a traffic-lighted intersection. Chances are, there is a camera in place, the focus set on your vehicle and recording your activities at that moment.

Moments later, your actions will be caught by another camera at another intersection. And it isn’t just traffic. Store owners and those who have been victimized in particular, are increasingly adding cameras to their electronic loop of security protection. Admittedly, there are areas that cannot rationalize the cost of cameras versus the relative low crime risk. What it amounts to is this: you may be able to run red lights with reckless abandon in rural America without risk of being recorded and/or prosecuted for the violations. (It’s also a lot less risky to run a red light in rural America.)

The idea that a terrorist crime could be committed in a major metropolitan area without some camera being in the vicinity is almost far-fetched. A relative in Chechnya was quoted as saying the accusations against his sons for the Boston explosions amounted to science fiction. It remains to be seen whether those sons are the ones responsible for the bombings, but it would be science fiction to believe (in our current state of technology) that activities at major public events could escape being captured by video.

Not just a random camera.

Look at Facebook. Pictures. Videos. Public. Private. Shameless and shameful. It is proof without question that the lives of the public in general are being recorded from almost every angle imaginable. All day. All night.

There are corners of the world that don’t have the same reverence and respect, adulation, envy, and accumulated indebtedness owing to the world of the cellphone. The US is not among them.

Whatever we may believe about privacy and our own lives, we should have – by now – learned that someone is taking our picture right now either for something we are doing, or something someone is doing nearby. We may only be in the background, but there we are, ready for computer enhancement and identification. Tagging, Facebook calls it.

Even as those who disagree with the technology will complain, they will also have to admit that there is some small measure of reassurance that the risk of being recorded may give pause to some who might consider conducting attacks like the Boston Marathon bombing.

On one hand, it is remarkable that within the course of a business week, an anonymous assault can result in the identification and arrest of a suspect. On the other, it is almost astonishing that anyone in the techno-savvy part of the world could believe it possible to slink away into the shadows without being captured – with authorities completing what was begun by the cameras.

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