Following our visit to paper maker extraordinaire Andrea Peterson in the fall (see our November blog post), we were eager to find opportunities to use her handmade papers in our conservation work. Of particular interest was her ABM binders board, which recycles phase box off-cuts to make a delightfully pulpy binders board that is reminiscent of boards used on books throughout the 16th through 19th centuries. Essentially a thick, dense sheet of handmade paper, Andrea’s ABM board is lightweight, alkaline, and comes in a variety of thicknesses that allow for a sympathetic pairing to an older text-block when a new case or binding is necessary.
Hesburgh Libraries recently acquired a c. 15th century manuscript on paper of theological works by Denys the Carthusian. While the manuscript itself dates to the 15th century, it arrived in a much later binding that had broken sewing and very thin detached boards covered in brittle marbled paper.
Though we prefer reattaching loose boards where possible, in this case it was determined that splitting or lifting the covering material from these very thin, irregular boards would cause damage. We therefore decided, in collaboration with the curator, that the marble paper covered boards would be retained loose with the manuscript in a cloth-covered clamshell box, and the manuscript would be mended, resewn, and given a new binding.
In the process of cleaning and mending the paper in preparation for resewing, a fragment of light blue paper was discovered adhered to one of the inner folios of the manuscript.
Though it is unclear why and when this paper fragment came to be attached to the manuscript, it is similar to the blue “sugar bag” paper found on many books from the 17th and 18th centuries. In constructing a new case for the manuscript, we used a thin (0.06”) piece of ABM board and covered it with Ruscombe Mills Sesley Sugar Bag handmade laid paper, which closely resembles the fragment of blue paper found inside the manuscript.
Although the new binding does not attempt to be a facsimile of any particular binding, the new case stabilizes the manuscript for use while echoing elements of the manuscript’s history with its thin, textured boards and light blue covering paper.
