Extensive water damage has led to the loss of the original English calf leather cover. Sewing has degraded and the twisted raised leather bands are broken and in some cases completely lost. Boards are crushed at the edges so that they no longer give a clearence for the text block.

This close up of the spine shows the extensive damage done to the spine. The sewing has completely disintegrated and the sections are soft on the spine. The endbands no longer exist.

The first step was to take notes and photographs of the item prior to restoration. Then as part of this step all original remnants will be archived as a record of the original binding. The second step is to disbind, remove old threads and brush clean all surfaces with a gentle goat-hair brush.

Using archival Japanese repair tissue and wheat starch paste the sections were repaired. The cockling on the paper is the result of the water damage on paper with the grain running the short way (foredge to spine). After drying, swelling was reduced by gentle pressing without losing the printing surface indentations.

The Japanese repair tissue is made from 100% kozo fibres. The fibres are very long and have very strong tear strength, even when wet with paste, yet the tissue remains soft so does not pull at the weak text paper.  

Although originally the book was sewn on raised twisted-leather cords, due to the general weakness of the water damaged spine it was decided to sew on flat hemp cords. Here the cords have been frayed , stiffend with past and twisted to-a-point ready to lace into the boards. The sections varied between six to eight pages thick and as result were quite mumerous. As a result we had to sew in a special way to reduce the swelling but we did use the existing holes to maintain the strength of the paper.