Materials commonly found in books
Many materials have been used in book production over the centuries.
Paper is essentially a felted sheet of cellulose fibres. During manufacture, a range of other substances are added to produce papers with infinite differences in quality, use, strength, texture, colour and surface. Paper is an enormously
Board is a general term covering early wooden boards through to modern, machine-made boards such as pasteboard, millboard, strawboard and others.
This 13th century manuscript book was produced
with vellum text block and wooden boards.
Photograph courtesy of Artlab Australia, reproduced
with permission from the State Library of
New South Wales
Parchment and vellum are untanned animal skins. Their use continued in Europe even after paper was introduced. These materials are rarely found in contemporary books, but were used widely in early manuscript books. Vellum and parchment are manufactured by stretching the animal skins and treating them with lime, while scraping them to remove fats and hair.
Wooden boards. The other side of these boards is
covered with leather.
Photograph courtesy of Artlab Australia
This 13th century manuscript book was produced with vellum text block and wooden boards.
Photograph courtesy of Artlab Australia, reproduced with permission from the State Library of
New South Wales
Wooden boards. The other side of these boards is covered with leather.
Photograph courtesy of Artlab Australia
This book is bound in dyed goat skin. The boards and
spine have been tooled using gold leaf.
Photograph courtesy of Artlab Australia, reproduced
with permission from the History Trust of South
Australia
Thread, cords and tape are made from linen. Linen tapes are made from woven, unbleached linen, which is stiffened with size. Cords are made from hemp fibres, spun and combined to make different thicknesses.
This book is bound in dyed goat skin. The boards and spine have been tooled using gold leaf.
Photograph courtesy of Artlab Australia, reproduced with permission from the History Trust of South Australia
Leathers are tanned animal skins. The tanning process gives a degree of chemical stability to the skin. Traditionally, leathers used for binding books were vegetable-tanned. This produced flexible leather with properties excellently suited for binding and decorating books.
Cloth is used in books in a number of ways:
• mull is an open-weave, cotton material stiffened with size. It is most often used
as a first lining on the spines of textblocks;
• Jaconette or Holland cloth, a closely woven cotton or linen, is also used for linings and for strengthening folds of book sections; and
• bookcloths are made of closely woven fabrics with pigment fillers and sizes, and sometimes with paper linings to prevent the penetration of glue. Bookcloths can be embossed to
Bookcloths are produced in a range of colours and
textures.
Photograph courtesy of Artlab Australia
create surface textures, and some are coated to prevent scuffing and soiling.
Bookcloths are produced in a range of colours and textures.
Photograph courtesy of Artlab Australia
This book was photographed
during conservation treatment. The
text block was sewn onto hemp cords. Note that the spine has been lined.
Photograph courtesy of Vicki Humphrey
This book was
photographed
during conservation
treatment. The
text block was
sewn onto hemp
cords. Note that
the spine has
been lined.
Photograph courtesy
of Vicki Humphrey
Various adhesives are used in bookbinding. They include:
• animal glue, which has been used for centuries. It is basically boiled-down animal skins, hooves and bones. It is used hot, and in most binderies the glue pot was kept cooking all day. Prolonged heating causes it
to alter chemically and darken. Animal glue is essentially a poor-quality, impure gelatine;
• polyvinyl acetate—PVA—is an emulsion adhesive which has been used widely in recent years. It is unsuitable for most conservation applications because it is very difficult to reverse;
• starch paste is the favoured adhesive for paper repair; and
• glair, which is basically egg white, is used to fix gold leaf to the foredge and to the covers, for example, in the case of gold tooling.
Books can contain a range of inks and other media—iron gall inks, carbon inks, printing inks and watercolours.
These notes on materials are very brief, but serve to illustrate the variety of materials used in books. When used in books, these materials are in very close contact and will inevitably affect each other.
For more information
For more information on paper and paper deterioration, please see the chapter on Paper in this volume.
For more information about leather, vellum
and parchment, please see the chapter on Leather in Caring for Cultural Material 2.

Paper repair
Don’t try to mend torn pages or damaged covers, unless you have good-quality materials and are confident that the methods you use will not cause damage in the future. Talk to a conservator if
you’re not certain that you’re doing the right thing, or if you want information about training courses.
If books are damaged, be aware that some repairs can cause further damage. Sticky tapes will, in the long term, cause permanent staining. In most cases, the adhesive migrates into the paper and changes chemically, becoming insoluble and discolouring, while the tape falls off. In addition to the original damage, the paper is now badly stained as well.
Similarly, many other glues and pastes introduce acids into the paper, and many also discolour with age.
If tears are extensive and large areas of the text
are missing, it is best to seek the advice or help of a conservator. But smaller repairs on bound books
can be carried out in situ.
Conservators work to a code of ethics. It is important to note some of these in relation to the repair of books, so that you can think further
about the choice of materials and the methods you will use. The notes which follow describe a conservator’s approach.
The treatment must be reversible, so that further treatments can be carried out in future if necessary, or so that improved techniques which may be developed can be applied.
The treatment should not disfigure or endanger the book. For example, wet treatments should not be used on material with inks that are soluble in water; and sticky tape should not be used, it
stains paper badly.
The treatment and materials must match the problem. For example, heavy repair papers should not be used to repair small tears on material which is hardly used. It is better to wait till you have an appropriate repair paper.
All treatment steps should be documented with information of what was used for the repair and, if possible, with photographs of the damage before treatment.
Repairing small tears in books

Repairing torn paper or reinforcing and lining
Japanese paper
repairs can be seen
on the lower left
corner and at the
head of the book.
The book is being
held open by a
Mylar strip which
is reflecting light.
weak, degraded papers is generally a wet process— involving sticking a strong, lightweight, acid-free paper to the damaged area with starch paste.
Japanese paper repairs can be seen on the lower left corner and at the head of the book. The book is being held open by a Mylar strip which
is reflecting light.
Photograph courtesy of Vicki Humphrey
Japanese papers are excellent for paper repair because:
• they are lightweight and strong, and their colours blend well with most papers;
• Japanese papers have long fibres—in comparison to most Western papers—this gives them their strength;
• if you decide to purchase some of these papers, ask for conservation-grade Japanese papers. Small packs of a range of papers are available from suppliers of conservation materials. You won’t need very much paper to repair small tears;
• they are usually handmade and suited for conservation. Papers such as Sekishu, Tengujo and Usumino are well-suited to book repairs because they are very fine and do not obscure the text; and
• these papers can also be water-cut, giving very soft edges to the repair patch. Knife-cut edges show as a hard ridge.
Paper can be water-cut like this:
• paper strips are water-cut using a fine brush, letter opener or bone folder, spatula and ruler;
• a stainless steel ruler is placed along the repair paper, with the required amount of paper protruding beyond the ruler;
• the wet brush is drawn along the ruler edge, wetting the paper: the paper should not become too wet;
• the letter opener, bone folder or spatula is then drawn along the ruler—to score the wet paper; and
• the strip of paper can then be pulled away from the rest of the sheet of paper.
The repair should not be much larger than the damaged area, but needs to be big enough to extend beyond the damage onto the sound paper around it. This makes a stronger repair. The feathered edges of the water-cut paper contribute to the strength of the repair, because they are all stuck down as well.
Paper strips are not always suitable for repair, and you may have to produce your own shapes. This can be done by needling out the shape using a mattress needle or the sharp end of a bone folder. Once you have made an impression in the repair paper with the needle or bone folder, apply water to the impression. Pull the shape away
from the rest of the paper.
CAUTION:
Do not needle out a shape while the repair paper is resting on your book.
If you do this you will create a weak area in the book paper. You can outline the shape required on the repair paper with a soft pencil, before you commence needling.
When repairing a page of text, remember:
• wherever possible, place the repair so that it does not cover text; and
• place the repair on the side of the page where the repair will be least obtrusive.
The repairs are stuck in place using starch paste. It is at this stage that difficulties can arise.
Always apply the paste to the repair paper, never
to the book pages. You should also allow the paste to air-dry till it is almost dry before placing it on the dry, book page. This will help to reduce the
risk of cockling and tidemarks.
Once pasted, the paper can become difficult to handle, but with practice the operation becomes easier.
Once the repair is in place, it wets the book paper, which will expand where it is wet. Because only small areas are wet, you will notice that it cockles. Controlling the drying is important for these
cockles to settle back down.
While drying, the repair should be sandwiched between:
• Reemay, which will prevent the blotter sticking to the repair; and
• blotters, which should be changed regularly,
to ensure that the moisture absorbed by them is removed from the repair area.
This sandwich should be weighted.
It is important that the paper is fully dried. Don’t rush this, as paper can sometimes take a couple of weeks to dry fully.

Blotter
Page being repaired
Reemay
Blotter
Make sure the book is
supported during repairs
CAUTION:
Repairing tears in books is not as easy as it might seem, and we strongly advise you to practise this before attempting it on a book. Wet paper will expand and distort, but with practice you can control the drying, so that the distortions flatten out without creasing.
It is also important to note that if you get the paper too wet during repair, you can produce permanent stains like ‘tidemarks’ in the paper. IF IN DOUBT DON’T DO IT!
Starch paste

Starch paste is the adhesive used most widely by paper conservators. Starch paste from various sources—for example, wheat or rice—has been used for centuries to stick paper to paper, and textiles to paper. And because it has been used for so long, we know a great deal about its behaviour. Some of its greatest advantages are that it does not discolour and it is nearly always possible to remove it without difficulty.
Starch paste is not difficult to make. You will need:
• 10 grams or 3.5 level teaspoons of starch, for example, Silver Star; and
• 100ml of water, preferably distilled or deionised.
These proportions produce a nice working consistency.
• Add about 10ml of the water to the starch, and mix to a slurry.
• Add more water, if required, to produce a smooth paste, and leave to soak for approximately half-an-hour.
• Heat the remainder of the water in a double- boiler saucepan, or in a beaker or jar in a saucepan of boiling water. Use glass or stainless steel containers.
• Add the starch slurry and cook for approximately 40 minutes, stirring constantly.
• Leave to cool.
Lumpy paste is difficult to use and the lumps will be obvious, so when the paste is cool press it through a fine cloth—Terylene, for example—or push it through a fine, Nylon tea strainer or sieve a couple of times.
The paste is now ready to use. Or it can be diluted if a thinner paste is required—this is best done by mixing the paste and the required amount of water in a blender. Remember, the thinner the paste the stronger the adhesive bond.
When using an adhesive on a valued, paper-based item, it is important to know just what you’re applying to the paper and how it is likely to behave over time. Many commercially available adhesives are starch-based, but most of these adhesives also have additives such as:
• preservatives;
• plasticisers, for example, glucose, to regulate the drying speed;
• dispersing agents; and
• mineral fillers to control penetration of the adhesive into porous surfaces.
These substances, which can affect the long-term behaviour of the adhesive, are rarely listed on the label.
If you have a problem relating to the storage or display of books, contact a conservator. Conservators can offer advice and practical solutions.

For further reading
Baynes-Cope, A. D., 1989, Caring for Books and
Documents, 2nd ed, British Library, London.
Bromelle, Norman S., Thomson Garry (eds.), 1982, Science and Technology in the Service of Conservation, Preprints of Contributions to the Washington Congress, 3–9 September 1982, International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, London.
Burdett, Eric, 1975, The Craft of Bookbinding—A Practical Handbook, David and Charles, Newton Abbot, UK.
Diehl, Edith, 1980, Bookbinding: Its Background and Technique, two volumes bound as one, Dover Publications Inc., New York.
Gettens, Rutherford J. & Stout, George L., 1966, Painting Materials, A Short Encyclopaedia, Dover Publications Inc., New York.
Johnson, Arthur W., 1978, The Thames and Hudson Manual of Bookbinding, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London.
Middleton, Bernard C., 1984, The Restoration of
Leather Bindings, Adamantine Press Ltd, London.
National Preservation Office, 1991 Preservation Guidelines, National Preservation Office, British Library, London.
Thomson, Garry, 1994, The Museum Environment,
3rd edn, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford.
Some of the methods described in the bookbinding manuals are not ones that would be employed by paper and book conservators. However, these books give very clear descriptions and illustrations of bookbinding styles, methods and materials. Some have excellent glossaries and notes outlining the history of different binding styles.

Self-evaluation quiz
Question 1.

The causes of damage to books can be broadly divided into two categories—physical damage and chemical damage. Name three examples of each.
Question 2.

When photocopying a book, you should:
a) be aware that its structure may not have been designed to open out flat;
b) force the book to open as flat as possible and press the photocopier cover down over the book to get a better quality copy;
c) take note of what you are intending to copy and consider that some materials may be sensitive to strong light;
d) open the book as far as you can until it makes a crackling noise and then stop;
e) if the book does not open fully, consider taking notes rather than copying.
Question 3.

Indicate which of the following can damage books:
a) opening new books gradually from the front and then the back, section by section, until you reach the middle;
b) removing books from shelves by pulling at the top of the spine;
c) pressing flowers in books;
d) wearing gloves when handling gold-tooled bindings;
e) flicking quickly through pages;
f) licking your fingers for easier page turning;
g) repairing books with sticky tape;
h) folding the corner of the page to mark your place;
i) leaving the book open over the arm of the armchair while you go to get tea and cake to have while reading.
Question 4.

What are the ideal temperature and relative humidity ranges for storage and display of books?
a) 30°C and 60%RH
b) 10–16°C and 45–55%RH c) 18–22°C and 10–20%RH d) 18–22°C and 45–55%RH
Question 5.

What happens to books that are badly shelved and are allowed to flop to the side?
a) The bindings distort over time. b) Nothing happens.
c) The sewing structure can break down.
d) They can fall apart.
Question 6.

Of the following materials, which are good to use for making storage and display furniture for books?
glass, uncured paint, PVA glue, enamelled metal, protein-based glues, for example, animal glue, inorganic pigments, chipboard, ceramic, cellulose nitrate, wool, polyester film, polystyrene, felt, polyurethanes, cotton, linen, PVC, unsealed woods especially hardwoods, acrylic polymers.
Question 7.

Which of the following statements are true?
a) All books should have support when they are on display.
b) Phase boxes are called this because they are boxes which are made in phases.
c) Wrappers can protect books and are straightforward to make.
d) Books which are displayed open should have their pages turned regularly to prevent light- damage to any one page.
e) Light and UV radiation have no effect on books. f) Book pages can be prevented from moving
during display, by placing a Mylar strip joined
end-to-end around the open book.
Question 8.

In a tropical climate books are likely to:
a) dry out leaving the glues very brittle; b) absorb moisture and develop mould; c) get very dirty;
d) lose pages.
Question 9.

When dusting books it is important to remember that:
a) sucking dirt away with a vacuum cleaner stops it being re-deposited on the book;
b) if using suction, precautions should be taken to reduce the suction so that it does not cause damage;
c) erasers can be used with extreme care, to clean paper;
d) shaving brushes should be new, if they are to be used for cleaning books;
e) all of the above.
Question 10.

Which of the following statements are false?
a) All books should be treated with leather dressing.
b) There are no problems at all with using leather dressing on books.
c) Leather dressing can stain paper because it is very greasy.
d) Leather dressing can make the surface of the leather sticky, causing dirt and dust to stick to the leather.
e) Leather dressing removes dirt and dust.
Answers to

self-evaluation quiz
Question 1.

Physical Chemical
dog-eared pages fading of textblock
tears to pages fading of binding materials
loss of pages discolouration of textblock
broken joints and discolouration of detached covers binding materials
scuffing, wearing and deterioration from losses to cover mould growth
materials damage from pollutants insect attack red rot
distortion
wear and tear

Question 2.
Question 7.

Answer: a), c), d) and f) are true. b) is false. These boxes are called phase boxes because they are
Answer: a), c) and e). It is important to be aware that you can cause damage if you photocopy books, and you should proceed with caution. Photocopiers which have a V-shaped copy-bed are available, so ask at your State library. If they have one of these, they may be able to supply you with the copy you need without you damaging your book. If you open out the book and hear crackling sounds, you are probably breaking up the adhesive film on the spine of the book.
Question 3.

Answer: All except a) and d) are damaging. a) and d)
could be damaging if you don’t take adequate care.
Question 4.

Answer: d). These are the ideal conditions but they cannot always be achieved.
Question 5.

Answer: a), c), and d) are all likely to occur. a)
will happen first, followed by c) then d).
Question 6.

Answer:
used in libraries in phased conservation programs. e) is false. Light and UV radiation can cause extensive damage to books.
Question 8.

Answer: b). In damp conditions books are likely to absorb moisture and grow mould if they are not well-ventilated and inspected regularly. Books could get very dirty and lose pages as well, but this would not be the result of the climate alone.
Question 9.

Answer: e).
Question 10.

Answer: a), b) and e) are all false. Only leather- bound books should be treated with leather dressing—and even some of these should not be treated unless the leather is consolidated first. Leather dressing should be used with caution because there are a number of problems associated with its use. If leather dressing is applied over dirt and dust, they set in place .
GOOD BAD
acrylic paints and uncured paint varnishes
cotton wool linen felt inorganic pigments PVA glue polystyrene PVC
polyester film cellulose nitrate ceramic polyurethanes
glass protein based glues, for example, animal glue
enamelled metal chipboard, unsealed woods—especially
hardwoods—Customwood