Paper repair; no more 'tears'!
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Paper is an amazing material,. True paper contains only plant cellulose which is pulped, diluted with water, and laid out into thin sheets. Gangolf Ulbricht https://papiergangolfulbricht.com/en/philosophy/, a paper maker in Germany produces some incredible handmade papers. A webinar that I attended by him through the Society of Bookbinders, was fascinating and I learnt so much about the differences between handmade papers and commercially produced ones.
In the 18th century and before, ll paper was handmade and used a laying process in which the cellulose pulp is collected onto a large tray with a fine grid of wires in the bottom. The water drains away and leaves a thin layer of the cellulose fibres behind. You can see a fascinating video by Gangolf here https://youtu.be/NAn92317mpA?si=PmXoYSxEYvTarx7v although the commentary is, of course, in German.
There is a fascinating history of paper making to be found here, https://baph.org.uk/resources/paper-history/history-of-papermaking-in-the-uk/ but essentially, all paper in books that I have worked on before around 1820, are handmade and laid on wires.
Whilst paper is strong in some ways, it also tears if the wrong forces are applied, and old books, having been around longer, tend to have more tears. We use Japanese Paper to repair tears. This is a laid paper which can be made incredibly thin. I have some 4gsm paper which I use very rarely for repairs. The Japanese Paper is glued onto the paper to be repaired and forms a new strong layer. To avoid the repaired paper deforming, it is important to put the Japanese paper on both sides of the tear.
Often, it looks like a piece of the page has been torn out as in the example below, but more often than not, most of the original paper is there, but it is just all folded up and needs carefully unpicking.
The 1638 King James Bible I am working on at the moment has a lot of paper damage. I thought it would be interesting to do a time-lapse of the repair of one of the tears.
This repair was a long uneven tear. The first job is to bring the edges of the tear back together again. There were two creases in the paper either side which needed ironing flat. I then use weights to hold the paper in place whilst I tease out the folded edges including where the paper had only folded over the upper surface which had the printing on it. Then strips of 12gsm Japanese Paper are applied.
Finally, the back has the Japanese Paper applied and then the whole thing is left under weight to dry and the excess trimmed off in line with the bottom of the page.
What I find humbling is that this paper was handled by somebody in 1638 when it was printed. That person was probably born whilst Shakespeare was alive; Charles I was on the throne,, although four years after they handled this paper, the English Civil War would break out . A nice symmetry that there was a King Charles when it was first printed and there still is when it was repaired.