2015–2016 treatments

Sig­nal book
cir­ca 1780
Assessed Octo­ber 13, 2014
Quar­ter brown sheep tight­back sided up with mar­bled paper. No spine lin­ing or head­bands. Thick off-white laid hand­made paper in eight sec­tions, end­pa­pers con­tigu­ous with textblock. Index tabs cut through­out. All edges sprin­kled red. Sewn two-on over four cords, out­er two laced into boards. Man­u­script through­out, in ink and pen­cil, with mar­gin rules in dilute ink. Water-insol­u­ble illus­tra­tions of flags through­out.
Con­di­tion
Leather dark­ened and miss­ing much of grain lay­er on spine and board edges, with all edges exposed and delam­i­nat­ing. Spine has loss­es at head, tail, and cords, split in the sec­ond sec­tion. The boards are attached only by the cords, and the leather is lift­ing with loss­es on the cov­er along the joint. The upper slip on the left board is bro­ken. Boards deformed where the index tabs were cut. Tape and tape residue from a shelf­mark at the tail. There are two stab holes on the right board and through three gath­er­ings. The sewing is intact.

Treat­ment
Sur­face cleaned and tears repaired. Leather con­sol­i­dat­ed with Klucel‑G® and lift­ed. Rebuilt cor­ners with linen fiber paste and cov­ered with toned Japan­ese tis­sue. Lined spine with tis­sue and patch lined with aero­cot­ton. The extend­ed cloth lin­ing was past­ed onto the boards. Rebacked with dyed repair calf. Lift­ed leather read­hered with Las­caux 498HV. Cre­at­ed four-flap enclosure.

Birds Shown to the Chil­dren
1921
Assessed Sep­tem­ber 2015
Brown cloth bind­ing with gold stamped boards and spine, with inset col­or print on left board. Medi­um weight cream textblock print­ed in black ink with col­or off­set plates on heavy white cal­en­dared paper tipped in.
Con­di­tion
Cloth over joints frayed and inner joint split, sewing bro­ken with some plates and pages detached from their conjugates.