Why does nobody talk about bookbinding in a 200 year old library?

I was in Providence last month visiting this historic library, the Providence Athenaeum, and I noticed their collection of old books had some wild binding styles from the 1800s. The leather spines were all cracked but still holding up, and I saw this one book bound in what looked like tree calf leather with these tiny marbled edges. I asked a librarian about the binding on this 1842 atlas and she said it was repaired 30 years ago with an old school technique, not modern glue. That got me thinking, does anyone here actually try to replicate those antique binding methods for fun projects? Has anyone else stumbled onto something interesting about old bindings at a random place?

4 comments

4 Comments

kai8395d ago

Oh actually the tree calf thing is cool but it's not a specific leather type, it's a staining technique they'd do on calfskin. They'd treat it with chemicals to get that swirly pattern that looks like tree branches. I've messed around with trying to do something similar on some scrap leather I had, but man is it finicky. You gotta get the chemical mix just right or it just turns brown and blotchy. The marbled edges on that atlas though, that's even harder to do at home since you need a whole bath setup for the floating pigments.

sanchez.ivan5d ago

Yeah, what chemical did you use for the tree calf?

the_lucas5d ago

Kai's right about it being a staining technique. I read somewhere that the old bookbinders used iron sulfate and oak gall extract to get that swirly pattern.

brooke4485d ago

Used iron sulfate myself. Messed up three times before I got it right.