#bible rebinding

A Floral Rebirth

Very often when customers come to get their bibles rebound, I will suggest for them to look for a patterned cloth that they like at fabric shops. The choices of printed fabric today are limitless and amongst the thousands of rolls of cloth, there is bound to be one that resonates with their personality. Ready-made book cloth often come only in solid colours, and that is very limiting. But because I offer the service of making regular fabric into book cloth, a very personalised look can be achieved. 

This beautiful floral fabric is paired with a dark maroon book cloth and matching ribbons in three colours to give a very vibrant and cheerful Sunday afternoon cocktail dress feel. It reflects the personality of my customer, who is a very happy, energetic and cheerful lady, with a feminine touch of elegance. 

A Special Gift from a Son to his Mother

Whenever I receive enquires about the rebinding of broken bibles, I often encourage my customers to look for any patterned fabric that they like, or a piece of clothing that they do not wear anymore but wish to have it around as a keepsake. For her birthday, my customer decided to give his mother’s bible a repair and a makeover. 

The material for the covers was cut from the back of a shirt that belongs to my customer, and the tail edge of the shirt was used to create pockets on the paste-downs of the endpapers. The initials “A.L.” is a beige Harmatan goat leather onlay, and it was adjusted to fit between the dots on the cloth.

The Excitement of Experimenting With New Materials

About 2 years ago, a customer came to me, with the intention to rebind his and his wife’s bibles, but with a very specific material in mind. He knew that I was game to test out new materials and could work out a binding technique to incorporate it. 

2 years later, he brought along a cork fabric that is manufactured in Portugal. According to him, this material has been used for making bags and wall coverings. This is something new in the market, and I have not used it before. So without knowing what I am getting into, I agreed to rebind his bibles using this material. 

The front side is cork that is laid out very evenly and is backed with a felt-looking fibrous material. I decided to use a disappearing spine Bradel binding because I did not have much confidence in the material being used over the hinge and the spine. When I applied adhesives to the cork material, the fibrous backing immediately absorbed all the adhesive like a sponge, leaving almost none left on the surface. So working with this material requires the adhesive, which is 100% PVA, to be viscous and thick. Then the cork material has to be quickly and accurately put onto the board, and then put into the press and left to dry overnight. The entire process to have the front and back boards covered and turned in took four days, with each step taking an entire day to dry.

The Watermelon Bible

Some months ago, I was approached by a lovely lady who lives in Australia. She wanted to gift her friend a gift certificate to get her bible repaired and rebound. I have never considered offering gift certificates, but yes, it is now available for a binding to be done for a loved one, family and friends.

The recipient of the gift certificate, also the owner of the bible, came to me with a bible that was in a terrible state. Many of the pages were loose and dog-earred. The entire book was barely holding it together. After looking at a stock of fabric that I had, this cheerful young lady chose this watermelon fabric, paired with a matching green for the outer skin of the fruit.

Bound using the disappearing spine Bradel binding, the bible is now a cute and cheerful watermelon! It gives me a lot of satisfaction seeing how straight the pages are again, and the neat edges of the book. It is often hard to imagine how a very broken book can be revived into something that looks almost new. But it is possible.

Bible in Batik

It is always very fascinating when I see batik fabric that is not the standard colours and patterns. This piece of batik was from my customer’s mum’s stash of leftover fabric. It is a very beautiful piece of batik that has a horizon, and I really liked that it allowed for the book to have a “top” and “bottom”.

My customer wanted to restore this bible because it has been with him since he was young. It is in Bahasa Indonesia and has tabs on the fore-edge. 

A Skirt From Cambodia

Most of the time when my customers come to me to ask for a rebinding of their worn out bibles, I offer them a choice of either a solid colour book cloth from my stock or if they would like, to find a piece of patterned fabric that they like. I will then make use of that fabric to make book cloth out of it. Based on the colours from the pattern, I will then choose matching coloured endpapers and ribbon markers. 

This lovely lady came to me with a skirt she bought from Cambodia. She likes the pattern on it, though we both felt it was a pity to cut into her skirt. But I rarely need a very large area and we both agreed to use the lower quarter of the skirt because the patterns were nice and she could make the skirt shorter and still wear it. 

Just a touch of Batik

Sometimes, having a burst of colours and pattern might be too much for some. That is, I believe, one of the factors why quarter bindings can be very attractive. In the past, quarter bindings were used mainly to save on precious materials like cloth and leather, and it usually covers parts of the book that takes most of the brunt of use, wear and tear. These parts are usually the spine and fore edge and fore edge corners. The rest will be covered in a slightly more affordable material like paper or cloth.

However in today’s context, quarter binding is often chosen as an accent, more than the utility of it. Since both the materials are of the same material and sometimes, even costing the same. The choice of a quarter binding is mainly for aesthetic purposes.

My customer has seen many of my previous rebindings of bibles and wanted the batik pattern on hers as well. But she felt that if it covered the entire book, it would be too loud for her. So she chose to have it on the spine as an accent, with the rest of the cover in a muted linen. The pale linen also allowed for her surname to be accented using a red book cloth that matched the batik. 

Big Bold Flowers - Recasing in Cloth

I always enjoy when customers are very daring to try bold and loud fabric patterns on their books. With this, they get a one of a kind binding that no one else will ever have. 

This is an old bible that belongs to a customer. She told me during the consultation that she likes bright colours and the Peranakan batik fabric. She even sent me photos of her favourite batik pants. With that, I found a red batik with bright flowers for her cover. 

As the book was perfect bound by a machine, the adhesive has already hardened and cracked. I removed the adhesive with a small tacking iron. I used a fine saw to create grooves where I inserted hemp cords to hold the pages. This endpaper method was discovered during the Endpaper Challenge and I felt it works very well for this binding. I matched the colours of the book cloth, endpapers and sewing threads.