Book Restoration and Repair

From a rare Shakespeare folio to a damaged family bible, the Otter Bindery has the skills and experience to repair and restore your treasured book. 

Using time honored methods and authentic materials we breathe new life into all manner of rare, valuable - or just well loved - items.

Some common repairs we undertake are:

  • Antiquarian Bibles such as Family Bibles bound in leather where the spine has come away
  • Victorian cloth bindings with loose boards and missing spines
  • Books with torn or damaged pages are repairable using a a variety of methods
  • Corner repairs where the corner of a book cover is missing can be rebuilt
Thank you for the volume The Wallace Shrine received today. I am impressed with the excellent repair. I will certainly contact you again if I need any more work of this nature. Stuart Rae-Brown

If you have a book that needs restoration please contact us to discuss you requirements.  We appreciate how valuable your book is to you, and will work hard to produce a repair or restoration which is in keeping, and does justice to the work of the skilled craftspeople who made it.

Thank you for your professional work on this piece of history.  As it approaches its 400th “Birthday” I think that it is a fitting contribution to a book that has been valued by several owners over four centuries who have left their mark therein.  Peter W, 2007

Below are examples of restoration work done at the bindery:

Thursday
Oct162008

Welsh Bible Repair

This Bible was printed in Welsh in the 1800's.  When it arrived in the Bindery, the original front and back boards were very degraded and the spine was unsalvageable.  Because the original covers were very plain, the decision was made to rebind it in a style fitting to it's age, with a calf spine and blind tooling on either side of raised bands.  The title was lettered using brass hand letters and gold leaf.

Tuesday
Aug122008

Breeches Bible - 1610

This Bible circa 1600s came with numerous pages torn with missing parts

The Boards had come away and the spine was brittle and unsalvageable.


To repair this book, a facsimile frontispiece was printed onto some sympathetically dyed paper and joined onto the original.   A new spine was made up to match the original and blind lines were criss crossed on the leather and dye was used to make as sympathetic repair as possible

Monday
Aug112008

"The Cottager’s Kitchen" 1859

The front and back boards of this book had come loose from the spine. There was a white masking tape residue on the spine. The edges of the boards were torn and tattered. There was masking tape inside the book and insect damage at the top of the pages throughout the book. There were tears on many of the tops of the pages and the original flyleaves were missing.

      

The boards were cleaned using lighter fuel. In-situ repairs using heatset tissue were carried out throughout the book mainly to the top edges. The first two sections were flattened and repaired as they were the worst affected. Sewing repairs were carried out. New ‘made’ endpapers were made using some original Victorian bible paper. The board edges were repaired using fine Japanese tissue which was painted to match the original cloth and laid on using wheat flour paste.

   

A cloth similar in colour and texture as was used for the reback material. A hollow was made the spine was also lined with fraynot and rebacked and cased in.

  

The book was then lightly polished with Renaissance Wax and a simple protective slip case made to house it.

Friday
Aug082008

Two House of Lords Journals

These Journals were missing parts of the leather binding and needed to be re-backed. 

New leather was prepared, dyed to match and placed into the gaps and a new leather spine was attached.

Finally, missing gold tooling was re-worked to give a sympathetic repair.