Conservation of barock period ecclesiastical book from Venice

in #art7 years ago

This particular book was created and printed by the Greek printer Nikolas Glukis(1619-1693) who started and evolved as a typographer in Venice one of the fist in his profession . His brand was a bee which was representing hard work .He printed almost 106 titles in which were religion , scientific and philosophic books, the book that I will conserve is a religion book . All the decorative art in the book is been made by hand before printed. The book is in very poor condition , the outside covering of the book is missing and it seems that the book have stayed in a place with water coming near because of the water stains the fungus in the surface of some pages and the soluble salts that had crystallize also in the surface of most of the pages there have been some restoration acts back in the day that the book was still in use and the restoration was made by pieces of other books because back then the paper was handmade and very valuable so they didn’t threw it away , instead they were using it again, such as the case of restoring the books that they were still using. In order to treat the book we had to cut the original book binding which was almost destroyed .First we had to make dry cleaning with some brasses to move away the dust and other deposits that have gathered in the surface, for the more durable deposits we use a lancet. After that we do the wet cleaning which is done by immersing the pages in a solution of ionized water and acetone, we test the ink first if its affected by the water or the acetone ,the acetone helps the water to penetrate the paper and take away the acids that have developed inside giving the paper a slightly yellow coloring. After the bath and the drying of the pages we start supplementation of the areas that are missing from the action of paper worms that have eaten there way throw the book. After we have all the pages cleaned and fulfilled we press them for two days in the pressure machine and the we bind them together with the same way they were first bided. And then for the final touch we add the covering which we cover with leather .(sorry for not analyzing the procedures of the bindings in the book and the way we fill the missing gaps in the pages which are very interesting parts also , they are very time consuming so I’m going to make a post for the two some other time) WP_20160304_15_17_22_Pro.jpgWP_20160304_15_21_03_Pro.jpgWP_20160304_12_40_47_Pro.jpg