The book shown above is one of our patients we take care of these days. As you can clearly see the condition is fairly hopeless.......
The book is a rare copy of the Paraphrases of Erasmus on the New Testament. Although the titlepage and impressum is missing we found out that this copy was printed by Edward Whitchurch in London in 1548. This is the first volume.
Problem.....
Obviously there are various problems but the main concern is how to get this object readable or manageable in a practical sense. The bindings are broken so the sections fall apart, the paper, especially around the edges is worn and brittle,the wooden boards are severely damaged by insects, the spine is gone but later replaced by a very thick (3 mm !!!) piece of leather, and the leather cover is perforated by bookworms, dried out and many pieces are missing.
Short; every time the book is opened pieces fall of and historical evidence crumbles......
Solution.....
Yes, the solution.......As stated before there's no need to restore the object to a form as it once was. The main goal is to make the object accessable to the owner, beside of that we have our ethical principles and, thereby some limitations.
As said earlier the title-page was missing. From the Britisch Library we got a photo of the frontispiece of the same edition. This foto was scanned and digitally processed (see examples of a portion of the image below) and afterwards printed on an "old-style" paper.
BEFORE AND AFTER 
First we took apart the "support-spine". Now we could have a look at the back of the book. Sometime in the past (probably 17th c.) the book had been repaired in a rather brutal way: the sections were sewn on the bindings in a very clumsy way. Besides of that the sections were not lined out. As a result the borders of the paper had been damaged. We decided to take apart the whole binding. Then we started reparing the sections, especially the inner folds. The first and last sections were in such bad condition that they had to be leafcasted. The other inner folds as well as the borders of the paper have been repaired with japanpaper (Tengujo-Kashmir 9 gr/m2).
Although the original sewing supports were made of leather we decided to resew the book on rope-sewing supports which last much longer. The front board had to be renewed, the back board was still usable but had to be impregnated with bone-glue to reinforce it. Then the boards were laced on the sewing supports and attached with wooden pins. The whole book was then covered with kalf leather (which was dyed first in the proper colour). Then the covers of the boards were glued (using "home-cooked" paste) on the new leather. On the backboard there was still one metal catch. Normally these are situated on the front boards and we found no evidence (like grooves or notches) that the original binding had the fastenings mounted in a reverse way. Because of that we decided to make full metal clasps (instead of leather joint-like clasps).
To complete the conservation we made a custom box with a special space to store the remainings of the book (the front board, the spine which was apllied later and the original sewing supports).
