This was a lovely book brought to the bindery by a client who collects cookery books and tries out some of the recipes. It was dated 1812 and was titled The London family Cook. It predates Mrs Beeton's famous book and goes through how to manage a domestic kitchen including laying out the table, example menus and a little about running the staff.

The book came to me with the covers off and some previous repair using some tape on the spine. The first few pages were badly damaged and the book had split completely in half where the cords had given way. The signatures around the split were also loose. There were also some hints that the covers had been re-used from another book as there was decorative paper underneath the leather and evidence of cord fixings on the foredge of the cover. Finally, the well-used book had lost all four corners and the leather had worn away at both the top and the bottom edges of the covers.

With tight back leather books such as this I am always sceptical of removing the spine intact, but with very careful and slow use of a paring knife, I managed to get the spine off in two pieces; it had already split where the book was in two sections in any case.

Once the spine was off and I had cleaned up the old glue, it was clear that the book had originally been bound slightly askew (see pictures) which is probably what caused uneven pressure on the spine every time it was opened and hence helped to cause the damage. Of course, this was also due to the fact it was over 200 years old as well!

The repair

I created small pieces of cord, attached these to the existing spine and sewed the loose signatures to those, embedding them into old spine. I also found evidence of red and white headbands and so I sewed new headbands onto the book block.

Once the book block was back together and firm with a new hinge of calico etc., I repaired the corners by inserting small pieces of shaped cardboard. This involved removing some of the old cardboard from the middle of the board to create a space and shaping a new piece so that it had a thinner part which inserted into the old board. These are then cut to shape. I took away the sharp right angle of the new corner so it better matched the rest of the book. These and the bare edges top and bottom were then covered with new pared leather tucking the new leather under the old leather on the fronts and the old fly-leafs on the inside.

I fitted a new hollow spine and recovered in new leather, sticking the old spine on the top. I stained down my new leather to better match the old.

Whilst I was cleaning the old spine I noticed some more detailed gold tooling around the second space and also evidence of some old glue which indicated that it had once had a label attached. I therefore decided to add a new label to finish off the repair.

Overall, I was really pleased with the final outcome, as was the client who is looking forward to trying out some of the recipes. One I would avoid though was 'Barley Gruel' which was advised for the 'Sick Chamber'. Not one I would like to try.