Adventures with old books #1
John R. Yamamoto-Wilson
wasn't quite so clued up on internet trading as I am now and, at odd
moments, applying the "sunbleaching" technique to its unsightly dampstained
pages. The technique consists of placing a non-porous sheet of paper behind
a sheet of the book, lightly drawing a moist piece of cotton wool across the
page and then leaving it in the sun to dry. I've used it satisfactorily on a
number of books. In this case, the cotton wool goes brownish and the paper,
being very robust, dries out with very little of the crinkling that often
results from this process.
The problem is, the book has some 600 pages, and at least two thirds of them
are dampstained! Well, last Sunday that, "Hey! Twenty pages done, only
another 400 or so to go" feeling finally got to me. I could spend the rest
of my life cleaning this book!
I recalled that once, after a canoing disaster, I'd slowly and painstakingly
sat on the beach drying out a book (just a paperback, a reading copy) that
had taken a dip. The paper had been a lot less robust than that of the book
I was now cleaning up...
Yes, that's right! The long and the short of it is that I ended up
discarding the cotton wool (exit, stage left) and introducing (enter, stage
right) a bucket of tap water (filtered, by a cunning device my wife
purchased a year or so ago, to the point at which it tastes about as good as
mineral water). I pinned back the covers and endpapers between my thumbs and
forefingers and dipped the pages of the book thoroughly into the water.
I was immediately amazed by colour of the water, which had turned the colour
of Lipton's tea! I pressed the pages gently between the palms of my hands
and the water changed to full-strength Brooke Bond's. I poured it away and
repeated the process with fresh water. The amount of brown gunk that came
out of that book defied belief.
Then came the laborious part. I had to separate out every single leaf of the
book and place a piece of tissue paper between the leaves. Even robust paper
is delicate just after taking a dip, so this was careful, painstaking work,
that ate up the rest of the morning. Once I'd inserted about fifty pieces of
tissue paper the book was starting to get unacceptably bulgy, so I had to go
back and take out the tissues I'd put in first in order to be able to carry
on and insert tissue between the remaining leaves.
Finally, though, I was through. Each leaf had been drained of excess
moisture, there was a huge pile of damp tissue on the floor (and three empty
boxes), and the book was out on the balcony, its leaves being turned slowly
by the wind and drying out nicely under a warm sun. Every so often, when the
wind had blown all the pages over, I would turn the book around and let the
wind blow the pages back again.
By nightfall, the pages were pretty dry, except for the first inch or two on
the hinge side. It took a combination of fan heaters and more wind and sun
drying over the next two days to get it fully dried out. The pages, though,
were looking wonderful - far cleaner than I'd ever got them using the cotton
wool method - and the dreadful musty smell had almost gone. The only thing
that was bothering me was whether the concertinaed pages, which spread the
book open like a fan, would ever be induced to lie flat again.
A few hours with some heavy objects on top of them soon convinced them that
they could, and the book is now on the desk in front of me, the only sign of
its escapade a slight wave in the pages of the middle section of the book,
and with only the faintest trace of remaining dampstain affecting some of
the pages.
The book in question was Andreas Divus's scarce translation into Latin of
the Iliad, published in Venice in 1537. If I'd been watching someone else
doing all of that to it I'd have been tearing my hair out!
--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com
William M. Klimon
news:ah3p5e$1k1u$1...@kanna.cc.sophia.ac.jp...
> The book in question was Andreas Divus's scarce translation into Latin of
> the Iliad, published in Venice in 1537. If I'd been watching someone else
> doing all of that to it I'd have been tearing my hair out!
John, you are one brave fellow!
Cheers.
William M. Klimon
http://www.gateofbliss.com