Inspiring Work From a "Mystery Bookbinder"

The latest work by "mystery bookbinder" and blogger, MHR is truly inspiring. For this project her client asked her to restore the leather binding of book about the Civil Wars of Spain.

"The book is The Civil Wars of Spain by Prudencio de Sandoval, (1652). The client asked for a brand new leather binding as one of the original boards was missing.

The leather is dyed to make it look appropriate for the era and I chose a red skiver as it was common around the time. I used the raw flyleaf as endpapers for this binding though I normally don't do that. In case some of you aren't familiar with flyleaf, it's the blank sheets at the beginning and the end of a book.

Yeah, THAT blank pages got a name just like anything else in the world. haha.. Anyway, traditionally, a book is cased-in with flyleaf as endpapers, and then, if it's preferred, endpapers are laminated onto it afterwards. There was a sheet of unrelated, incomplete manuscripts sewn as a part of original flyleaf on each front and back of the book, and the client asked me to take them out as he was curious as to what they were.

When you take out things like this from a book, you gotta make sure to indicate where they came from, in case they are separated from the book. Or you never know what they are!"

To see more of her beautiful bookbinding and restorations take a look at MHR's Blog.

(via MHR's Blog)