Sew it, rather than paste it!

The next speaker, we go from Turkey to Spain, is Rita Udina She wants to sew it rather than to paste it! Rita, please. Can you hear me, and see me? Yes we can hear you, but we cannot see you Now, yes, we can see you, and we can hear you. Please start your presentation. Good afternoon everyone! I am Rita Udina paper and book conservator from Spain So 15 minutes doesn’t give (Well, thank you first!) In these 15 minutes there’s no time for much so the title of my presentation is at the same time introduction and conclusion. I will share the powerpoint… Good so “Sew it rather than paste it!” That’s it if you still want to stay for 10 more minutes you shall be aware that I will only highlight the main concepts of the full paper. Good, so books there are plenty of materials and decoration that might differ but the essential remains: a binding, a structure that collects as well as enables to flip the folios.

01:56 - There is a large variety of structures, but keeping in mind this essentiality simplifies conservation a lot. It’s all about pasting and sewing, and according to my experience parts that require movement endure more when they are sewn, whereas those static ones are stronger when they are pasted. This is a detail of a book cover and a really flexible sewing gathers the covers with the text block, allowing movement. And the paste-down, the endleaf, which is static on the cover, remains adhered to it with some paste. I will discuss today three general cases of bookbindings.

02:53 - Proportion of the books is not a matter of how big they are, it’s a matter of the capacity of its structure to enable handling, protect the content, and be functional. This is a disproportionate structure, because the spine of the textblock is twice as wide as the wrapper -the parchment wrapper, the outer spine- and yes: it remains attached, but one third of the text -the folios- remain unprotected, and if we intend to uncurl the textblock then it shall never fit in! So it’s an enduring but failing structure. And most common, but not so obvious is the case of really heavy books. These books cannot hold themselves vertically on the shelf without suffering damage. In this particular case the cords are on a recessed-cord sewing, and they have been already weakened in the binding process, where the slips were frayed in order to prevent bulk on the paste- down and the inner joint, and that’s why they break.

04:37 - Disproportioned bindings can also be really small. For instance, this is after conservation. I mean it’s diproportioned as long as the attachment boards and textblock is too weak. Before conservation the textblock was falling towards the shelf, because it was too heavy. And that’s a really interesting case of an original adhered reinforcement. This was done in the binding process, it consists on a thickest fabric, loads of glue and the most reliable sewing on tapes, and still all these three things were not succeeding to keep the text block attached to the covers.

05:32 - Was it because the text block is too heavy? Or maybe because too much movement should have discouraged adhesion! It would have been as easy as just doing some random stitches on a sewn reinforcement in the spine: going through a mull, for instance, or a reemay, and the gatherings of the textbook. And then we can insert the mull or the reemay into the covers. and this guarantees a really flexible, strong and enduring bond, no matter how heavy the book is. And once the structure is properly reinforced, the rest, is really easy! Second study case: bindings without sewing. It’s the most common case of albums. In albums the content is inserted after binding the book which needs to be flexible enough for this intensive handling to accommodate the photos The structure consists on folios adhered to each other But adhesion fails in this flexibility requirement and that’s why most of the times the folios and the covers are completely detached.

07:17 - If instead of pasting we make a sewn attachment it is much more efficient, much lighter and invisible. So here you see the mull again, and a sewing on the mull. Good! I will go now to the third general case, because many of you might be wondering OK Rita, but what do you do when there’s no chance to make sewn reinforcements? What I do is what I have learned by observing old bindings. Many of them have used the grain direction as a provider of structure in these adhered parts. For instance, this is an endleaf of a book and you can see that it has the opposite grain direction, and this is not that rare.

So I wondered why would the bookbinder went 08:46 - to so much struggles to get such a poor result? Because we know that the opposite grain direction involves plenty of wrinkles all over. And I thought: Is it that they don’t know what they are doing? I don’t think so! Maybe it’s a really clever way to prevent tears along the joint, because the tear goes in horizontal! If we use the regular vertical grain direction, tears are favored along the joint and then we have a detachment of the endpaper. This providing structure to adhered attachments is what I do in sewn unsupported bound books. There’s really not much time to go in further detail for these bindings which is a bit complex but you have the video on this link below and you can watch it. So in these types of bindings I take advantage of, I combine, three different things: 1) the reinforcement with the sewing, whenever it’s possible; 2) the grain direction as a provider of structure in mobile attachments, and a third one which is detaching the the spine from the text block.

Then I convert 10:35 - a tight spine to a hollow spine, and I do this in order to make the outer spine less vulnerable and the whole structure much more flexible. So, combining these three aspects we have a light, invisible and really flexible structure. And here’s the link to a paper I wrote explaining all these things which is in Spanish, I’m sorry, and in Catalan. In conclusion: unions that require movement endure more when they are sewn, and we take advantage of grain direction as a provider of structure; and flexible areas should remain light. Thank you all! Thank you very much Rita, thank you also for the very instructive depictions and slides, and a very I should say a topic which is very important and holds many unsolved aspects and I think there are also questions to you later so I also invite you to stay until the end of the section, please.

At least stay until the end of the section, of course you can stay 12:17 - for the whole conference, and you are very welcome!.