Family Heirlooms
So much of our personal history is vested in our books. We cherish our family Bibles, our parents’ cookbooks, the dictionaries our immigrant grandparents relied on, even our own favorite children’s stories, novels, and poetry collections. These treasured volumes are handed down from generation to generation, accruing value in the form of inscriptions, clippings, and marginalia—as well as tears, tape, tatters, and countless other forms of damage.
We will help you preserve these books by repairing them for future use, protecting them from damage in custom enclosures, and educating you on best practices for storage and handling. All materials are museum-quality, and each treatment is determined by the condition of the individual book and your priorities for its preservation.
A family Bible in use since the mid-nineteenth century had lost its original spine and half of its clasp, and most of the sewing had broken. We resewed it, repairing the pages as necessary, then rebacked the Bible in new goatskin toned to a color similar to the original. We also replaced the missing clasp with a new brass piece cut to echo the shape of the original and a new leather strap matching the spine. In deference to the Bible’s continuous handling through the generations, we left the worn leather as is.
Family Bible
A treasured grandmother’s cookbook had been used so often that it had fallen apart and been repaired more than once. We removed the tape from the title page and reattached the leaf with Japanese paper and wheat starch paste, then rebacked the book with aerocotton toned to match the original case.
Grandmother’s cookbook
This palm-sized prayerbook was treasured by our client’s father and so too by our client. In order to preserve the book and make it safe to handle and use, we removed the tape that had held the case together and rebacked the book with cloth toned to match the original.
Prayer Book
In the early twentieth century, an immigrant to the US handwrote his autobiography in a composition notebook so his descendants would understand their parents and themselves. We conserved the badly damaged notebook, then digitized the entire narrative and hand-bound facsimiles to keep the original book safe while making the autobiography available for his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to read.
Composition Notebook
Notes from the Bench
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