Adopt-A-Book Program

This sixteenth-century German medicinal text required extensive conservation treatment to make it usable. The sewing was broken, it had been eaten by insects, and the text block was heavily stained and growing mold from water damage. The original wooden boards were also covered by two layers of decorative paper. To repair this text, the text block was completely disbound and washed. Losses in each page were filled with dyed Japanese paper. During treatment, fragments of a New York newspaper from the late 1700s were found under layers of binding material. After re-creating the original sewing structure, the wooden boards were reattached. Finally, the spine was covered in alumtawed pigskin using a style common for the period.