The Lendrum Internship in Book Conservation

By Freya Chambers

Part 1: My First Book Conservation Projects

Last May, I started the Lendrum Internship in Book Conservation at Palace Green Library. The internship lasts for one year and gives the intern the opportunity to explore the world of rare books conservation through undertaking supervised practical projects to conserve books from PGL’s vast special collections library.

It was my first in depth taste of book conservation after completing my degree in Objects Conservation at Cardiff University and working as a student archive conservation intern at Glamorgan Archives.

My first project was a 17^th century Latin dictionary from Bishop Cosin’s Library. This was a tight-back binding. The left board and front-end leaf had completely detached from the spine, meaning the structure would be very vulnerable for researchers to handle.

Before going ahead with the treatment on this structure, I was instructed on making a board reattachment model. On each sewing support station, I replicated a different method, which helped me to understand the pros and cons of different options and allowed me to make an informed decision on which I thought was most suited to my repair work.

By using modern materials like aero-plane linen, I was able to reattach the board to the original binding by creating a new hinge without adding extra bulk to the spine that would show up through a tight-back structure. Japanese paper, acrylic paints and pencils also helped me to colour match the new hinge.

The book after conservation treatment. The board reattached, and the area of missing leather / material consolidated.

After building confidence in re-attaching boards, I moved onto my next book – an early 20^th century manuscript from the Richmond Collection. This was interesting to work on due to its complex structure. The book looked and opened like spring-back, however, its spring was merely thin card attached through the leather covering onto the board edges, in which the leather had split and failed, causing the spring to become detached. On a true spring-back, the extremely strong card that is moulded into a spring on clings onto a thick lever which is inserted between split boards.

Detached spring revealed leather spine linings which are a common characteristic feature of a spring-back binding.

By making a model of a true spring-back, I was able to take inspiration from the structure to repair my own project by reinforcing the spring, splitting the boards, and attaching an aero-linen ‘lever’ to the spring, and then inserting this lever into the split boards, and attaching tinted Japanese paper hinges thereafter to match the leather.

This project really reinforced the importance of understanding how structures work mechanically to devise the best treatment plan.

Part 2: Further Projects, Shakespeare, and more!

Following on from this, I felt confident to complete a full leather re-back to a small book of Latin commentary found in Cosin’s Library. This little book had a severely red rotted spine that was crumbling to the touch; therefore, I decided to remove the spine and secure it before the degradation got much worse, and more material was lost.

The book required re-sewing, due to broken sewing thread and degraded leather sewing supports, so I used the ends of the new pliester tape sewing supports to reattach the boards, then dyed and pared a small piece of calfskin to match the colours of the original boards using sellaset dyes. Colour matching was something I found both difficult and intriguing, and the internship gave me the tools and opportunity to develop on this skill, becoming proficient at the end.

Another fun project where I got to test my colour matching and re-backing skills was to repair the Durham University Archaeology department’s first accession register. The cloth spine was split causing the board to become detached from the spine. I experimented with watered down acrylics on aero-linen to create a new cloth spine which helped the book to function once again as it was intended.

To add to all these fantastic practical conservation experiences, I joined during a period of intense planning and preparation for the newly opened exhibition: Shakespeare Recovered, which focuses on conservation decision making. This gave me a detailed insight into how the team at PGL have made mindful decisions on the current and future care of Durham’s First Folio.

For the exhibition, I was able to bind my own 17^th & 19^th century facsimile handling models of Shakespeare’s First Folio to give visitors an idea of materiality of books across the centuries.

Sewing the 17^th century First Folio facsimile and forwarding it with leather after lacing on the boards.

In addition to this, I was able to assist with the running of ‘Binding the Bard’ – an international bookbinding competition to rebind a facsimile edition of Shakespeare’s First Folio, and a symposium on Conservation Ethics & Decision Making.

All of this gave me an incredibly wholistic experience of what it’s like to work as a book conservator in a busy conservation studio, and the skills and experience I have gained have been invaluable.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to the entire conservation team at PGL for sharing their expert knowledge with me and supporting me. In particular, I want to thank Lauren Moon-Schott and Tony King for their fantastic, enthusiastic teaching of book conservation which helped me to build heaps of confidence and new skills!

Lastly, I would like to say a special thank you to Chris and Margaret Lendrum who fund this internship. Without them, none of this would have been possible. The next Lendrum Intern in Book Conservation will be incredibly lucky and I wish them the best!