Family Bible Repair

I have been getting a few bible repair jobs lately which has been quite exciting! I love seeing bibles from different time periods. I have talked to a few different people about repairing bibles, it is difficult work largely because the value of the bible is more sentimental than the monetary value so it's very hard to give a quotation for the work that is considered reasonable for the client. I have been lucky to get bibles that people do treasure and I am given enough time and resources to work on them. This bible was in pretty good condition other than the hinge on the front cover and the corners of the yapp.

This is the first time I have worked with a bible with a yapp. The yapp binding is named after a book seller called William Yapp, this binding is mostly associated to books of devotions, it is where the covering material over extends and overlaps somewhat beyond the page edges. The client had the bible sitting upright to display, so the corners of the yapp was damaged due to the weight of the bible.

I repaired the hinge by lifting the cover material and reinforcing the hinge under the cover material with book cloth. I glued a colour Japanese paper on top of the cover material to secure the hinge and to make it visually cohesive by matching the colour. The corners were also mended with paste and colour matching Japanese paper.

I made a clamshell box for the bible as the client wanted to gift it to her son as a Christmas gift. Boxes are good for books especially in a place like Hong Kong where the fluctuation of humidity and temperature is high. By keeping it in a box, you create a safe environment for the book where it would preserve the book better where it would be subjected to the environments less, so it would be less likely for it to mould. Sometimes with certain books, I would tell the client to make a box instead of repairing the book depending on the usage, if it's just for a keepsake purpose and you want it to not deteriorate as fast a box is a good option and it's less costly than repairing.