JAMES REID-CUNNINGHAM
BOOKBINDING & CONSERVATION LLC
Conservation of Young Man's Companion, 1710.
Condition:
Full calf scaleboard binding, possibly contemporary with the printing.
The spine and lower board are missing.
The upper board remains loosely attached by the slips and has cracked and degraded leather.
No extant flyleaves. The extant pastedown is printer’s waste with ink annotations.
The sewing is weak in places, with loose sections at the end. The final leaf has a major loss at the head.
There is a folk repair visible at p. 203-205, with thread meant to re-attach the loose final section.
Conservation treatment:
The leather on the remaining board was consolidated using 2% Klucel-G in isopropyl alcohol. The damaged leaves were mended with kozo paper using wheat starch paste.
The loose sections were sewn back onto the intact sewing using 25/3 linen thread using a link stitch.
The upper board and a new lower board were hinged back onto the textblock with medium weight kozo paper using wheat starch paste.
The volume was rebacked with archival calfskin colored to match the extant board using Roda NF dye.
The lifted leather was re-adhered with Jade 403 PVA.
The inner hinges were lined with kozo paper using wheat starch paste.
The new leather was tooled in blind in a pattern similar to the remaining board.
The volume is titled in gold on a red leather lettering piece on the spine.
There were color touchups done with acrylic pigment.
Conserved in 2020.