collecting - Spine Repair

"Francis A. Miniter" wrote in message
news:44bd29cc@kcnews01...
This last weekend I bought a copy of Synge, Riders to the Sear , 1911
Luce, Boston , the first American edition. I now have several of the
American firsts of Synge that Luce published . The problem with this
one is that the spine is damaged.

The book has green boards and a tan quarter parchment-like binding over
the spine. The portions of the parchment (?) glued to the boards is
fine, but the part that would be loose over the back is gone. There
would not have been a title on the spine as the whole play is only 46
pages long. So I was thinking that perhaps I could duplicate the paper
and make a new spine cover.

I was wondering if any of you are familiar enough with this series to be
able to say if I am correct in classifying the needed item as parchment
, or is it something else.

Francis A. Miniter

I'm not familiar with that particular book, but in the 1880's, the
London publishers Kegan, Paul, and Trench published a series of 16mo
titles bound entirely in what appears to be parchment. The only title
I have to hand, is Swift's Letters and Journals, although I've seen
others knocking around in the shops, and I may have some others myself.
All are in imitation of 15th and 16th c. Venetian and similar works.
The point being that the title and front cover feature very fine
printing including K,P,and T's device which would presumably
be impossible on actual parchment, which as you know is animal
skin. Aside from its being totally uneconomic to use in a trade series.
This was before the days of plastic - except celluloid anyway, and I've
often puzzled as to what it is. Paper containing a lot of size or glue
perhaps - applied either before or after printing. It's possible to
create a similar material by soaking paper in sufficiently thick cold
water paste.
While nowadays of course, the term "parchment" is applied to certain
textures of laser\inkjet paper as well.

michael adams

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