Cloth Binding Conservation

Many times when I am Conserving a Cloth Bound Binding, I have to match the original cloth. There are two important points of consideration when doing this. The material should match exactly or very closely, and the color needs to match exactly. I almost always have to dye the cloth to match eventhough I have an extensive antiquarian cloth selection to choose from. Usually there is a original spine I can relay but in the case of this book there wasn't one. A 22k gold tooled leather label is sometimes the way to go, especially if there is a lot of gold embossing on the cover. In this books case, I found that a hand tooled ink/paper label would look better. The final product is a beautiful, solid little cloth binding ready to be sold or saved in ones collection. Please go see many of my Cloth Conservation before and after photos at my website at www.book-restoration.com