Flowers Personified

     This beautiful volume arrived with the spine detached. A rebacking using the original spine is a common repair, especially when the spine is tooled as nicely as this. The first step is to remove the boards, clean the spine, and inspect the state of the sewing. Repairs to the textblock happen first, as well as the decision whether to sew on new cloth joints or to lay them over the spine. Once the pages are in good shape, a new spine is made with the closest match of leather grain and color. The leather on top of the boards and the paper pastedowns inside are carefully lifted so that the new spine can be tucked in. After new paper joints are worked inside and all is closed up, the last steps involve reattaching the original spine and any blending or touch up needed to hide the new work as much as possible.