Bookbinding & Masterly Bookbinding

 They may well say that you should not judge a book by its cover, but when Paul Tronson binds a book by hand in vegetable-tanned leather, it can be transformed from worthless tat into a collector's item. Jo Ind met the master bookbinder.

Paul Tronson is a book doctor. He's also a detective, a historian, an alchemist, an artist, a craftsman and a valuer. These are all the roles he needs to practise his craft of master bookbinder. Paul's job is to restore books - ripped apart through love or negligence - to their former glory.

Not only does he make them look as they would have done in whatever century they were created, but as far as possible he uses the tools, methods and materials of the era from which they came. So if he is restoring a seventeenth century book with a leather cover, he does not dye it using today's synthetic colours.

He gets walnuts and oak bark and cochineale and creates the colours according to a seventeenth century formula, just as they would have done 400 years ago.

His workshop at Yew Tree Farm Craft Centre, Wootton Wawen, Warwickshire, contains pretty decanters with intriguing coloured liquids in them. "No two jobs are the same," says Paul. "I have to do whatever is required for each book." When a book comes in for restoration, Paul's first task is to analyse it.

It may have pages missing, tears or stains. Or it may have been repaired by a previous binder in a way not sympathetic with the original. Paul has to take it apart and care for each individual page before he binds it up again. If a page has a stain on it, he has to assess what that stain is. And it is not enough to know just that it is ink, for example. He also has to work out what the ink is made from.

He is able to remove a wide variety of stains, like crayon, ink and foxing.

Then he has to know about the "size" of the paper. Size is the gelatinous mixture, like a glue, which is what holds the fibres of paper together. Paul has to find the remedy or chemical which will remove the stain and then use an exact formula for re-sizing. If he gets it wrong, he could make it worse.

"You have to get it right first time, there is no second chance " he says. So how does he know what formula to use?

"Centuries of understanding," he says, adding to the sense of an alchemist at work.
When pages are torn or missing he works his magic in other ways. First of all he has to find a copy of the work he is repairing. Copies are obtained from institutions around the world, he says.
When he has found the page he needs, he makes a copy of it and prints it onto the same kind of paper as the book he is restoring and can sometimes even match the watermark in the paper. He has to line up both the print and the fibres of the paper, with the original and knit them together so the seam can not be seen, or invisibly mended.

If he did not show examples of pages on which he has done exactly that, you would think it was impossible. Once each page is perfect - well not too perfect "that wouldn't look right, it needs to be aged to the period" - Paul binds it in keeping with its era. He even makes the cord that is used to sew the pages together himself. It starts out as natural hemp which he twists until it is rope-like. Then there is the task of making the marble patterning that appears on many period books inside the covers. This is done by creating a kind of gum made out of seaweed and floating water-based pigments in various colours on top.

But the pigments are not dropped on randomly. The design is carefully created to match that of the same period, then a large piece of paper is laid on the bath and the marble pattern is transferred to the paper

Then it has to be done all over again to create a match for multiple volumes.
When he has hand-sewn the book in a style in keeping with the period, he is ready to create the cover.

His workshop is full of books with luscious leather covers he has created, hand-tanned leathers, with hand-made dyes and embossed with 23 carat gold leaf. First he has to find the right design for the book, reproducing the one it would have had originally, or picking one in keeping with the period.

His workshop is full of literally hundreds of little tools, like stamps in the form of letters or patterns in various sizes. Paul has to heat the tool to the right temperature and then press on the leather creating an indentation.or "blind impression".

It has to be in exactly the right place, so that a row of twenty little leaves, for example, are equally spaced.

"You don't get a second shot," reminds Paul. Then a glue-type mixture is created from egg white and applied over the pattern - enough to hold the gold leaf in place but not so much that it fills up the indentation. Finally the gold leaf, which is so fine you can not hold it or breathe on it, is laid on and the hot tool worked into the exact place of the indentation. "I do like the intricate work," says Paul. "I like creating something beautiful."

Paul, who is from Birmingham, was interested in printing while he was at school. He originally wanted to be a lithographic artist but as there were no openings for that kind of work, he went to Matthew Bolton Printing College and was apprenticed with a small print company for six years.
From there he worked for various printers and bookbinders, all the time working on developing the traditional skills in his own time.

As an apprentice he had been taught to analyse books and work out how they had been made originally. The task of a traditional bookbinder is then to treat them in the same way using the same materials and the same techniques.

So Paul, aged 45, would develop his own formulas, crafts and techniques until he was sufficiently established to set up his own business 21 years ago specialising in the restoration of antiquarian books.

Not surprisingly he has customers from all over the world, and that is without advertising. One man came over from Geneva just so that Paul could restore his book and another recently for the day from Ireland.

"It's a noble art," says Paul. "It absorbs many crafts. Even in this age of technology there are many like-minded artisans preserving the values of traditional craftsmanship. Paul also buys, sells and values books and can be found at Period Fine Bindings, Yew Tree Farm Craft Centre, Wootton Wawen, near Stratford-upon-Avon, B95 6BY. His telephone number is +44 (0) 1564-793800 e: tronson1@gmail.com and his website is http://periodfinebindings.typepad.com/