Category: book conservation

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“Feeling Small” While Paring Leather

There is a recent New York Times article which describes the difficulties of creating a robot with a sense of touch comparable to a human. One of the links in the article, “Feeling Small: Exploring the Tactile Perception Limits”, contains suprising results. It turns out our fingers are exponentially more sensitive than previous research has indicated. Earlier studies used abrasive paper, while this study used wave-like ridges, which may account for some of the difference in the new findings.

Human fingers, when using “dynamic touch” — sliding across a surface — can distinguish a ridge that is 13 nanometers, which is .013 microns, or about .0000005 of an inch. For comparison, the thickness of a sheet of standard copy paper is a mountainous .004 of an inch thick. The average particle size of green chromium oxide stropping compound is .5 micron, which produces a mirror finish on steel.

My mind is blown. Should I be able to feel the individual fibers on a Japanese tissue paper repair? Will I ever be able to pare leather smoothly enough?

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A Book and a Model of a Book

model and book

A two image gif: a model of an 18th century French binding and a real 18th century French Binding

Conservators often make models of bindings in order to understand how materials, structures, and techniques interact. Models are different from a facsimile or pastiche bindings: they are not intended to look like an old binding, but are made as closely as possible to replicate an historic structure. Making models helps conservators understand subtleties and procedures of construction, and aids in determining what physical evidence is essential to preserve. While acknowledging a model’s new materials, conservators can also use them as a mock-up to test treatment options.

The model above was made by following the technical descriptions in Diderot, Dudin, and Gauffencourt. (1)  How does this gif inform our understanding of the relationship between the model and historic binding?  How can the lacuna between them be interpreted? In this gif, the model simultaneously bursts out of the historic binding as the binding disappears into the model, possibly analogous to our conceptual understanding of the two.

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1. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert Encylopedié ou Dictionnaire Raisonne des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, Paris, 1751-1780; René Martin Dudin L’Art du Relieur-Doreur de Livres, Paris: Saillant & Nyon, 1772; Jean-Vincent Capronnier de Gauffecourt Traité de la Relieure des Livres (originally 1737) trans. by Claude Benaiteau, Austin: W. Thomas Taylor, 1987.

Added 17 Sept 2014:

Model and book

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Upcoming Event: Time and the Book, Yale University, September 12 and 13, 2014

Next week, on September 12 and 13, 2014, I will be participating in a symposium sponsored by the Yale Program in the History of the Book.  Registration for the symposium is full; however, Kathryn James’s lecture, “Time in Place” is open to the public.  It is great that academics are becoming interested in the book as a material object; I suspect there will be some fascinating discussions.

symposium