Photo by Roman Kraft
“We are not professional bookbinders,” Art Wilson stresses. “We repair and restore books, but if you have a book worth $10,000, this is not the place to bring it.”
Wilson is a volunteer with Memphis Public Library system’s Friends of the Library. The repairs he deals with brought in by the public are mostly bibles and yearbooks. His tools of the trade are glue, linen or cheesecloth, and a book press.
Wilson is currently restoring a circa-1790s, leather-bound volume of The Lives of Plutarch, preparing it for sale at the Second Editions Book Store.
They “restitch” a book’s loose pages by removing the cover and binding and putting the pages in the book press. They etch grooves in the spine and fill them with glue and use cheesecloth to secure the cover page back on the book.
Ink and crayon stains can be removed by gently rubbing the stain with steel wool. Mold stains take a chemical substance.
Sometimes, they’ll use gold paint to replicate lettering on a spine, and if a book’s cover isn’t too ornate, they’ll do their best to replicate that as well.
Wilson says that a lot of what they do is simply make the book functional again.
If someone has a book they want repaired or restored, he’ll have them come in with the book for a meeting.
“Chances are good we can fix it,” Wilson says. “I’ve never told someone I can’t work on the book.”
Cost: $10 for minor repairs, $30 for major repairs. Money goes to the Friends of the Library, 483-0478.
