Miller Bookbinding

To celebrate the first two students to be awarded a doctorate under my clients' academic supervision, these books were bound as a keepsake. The styles and colors were chosen to reflect on the content and interests of the students.

This dictionary was an absolute joy to work on. It came in totally covered in a dirty wax substance that clearly was not part of the books original cover. Cleaning it off revealed a lovely decorative design. The before photos can be seen at the end of the photo collection. Aside from surface cleaning the first sections of the dictionary were lose and needed to be mended and reattached. After all that a new spine in a sympathetic colour was used and the original spine glued on top.

It's been a while since I've posted but I slowly been working through the stack of books that need repairs. This was a fun and quick little repair. The book came in with the text block and case having separated. The restored book was a gift to a nurse in training.

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This Bible came into the shop with a broken spine and loose covers. A fairly simple repair overall save for the fact that I've never worked with material that was so rigid and unwilling to play nice with the new repairs. I dont know what the original binders used to make that paper so rock solid but it's both impressive and an awful joke to future binders!

Once the original spine was back on, I made some custom dye to help maybe the new material to the old and conceal some bumps and scratches. From there a little repair work was done to the family tree section.

Overall very happy with how this repair turned out and it should now last many more years

This book came into my shop split in half and not really usable for reading anymore. The owner requested that the book be converted into a hardcover and covered in a traditional manner. To that end I used a black leather spine and a lovely warm marble paper.

This was a fun little repair. The books spine had come off but otherwise in overall good shape. I replaced some missing chords within the textblock to strengthen it. From there it was reattaching the boards and putting on a new spine. I wasn't sure i would be able to color match the minty green but by good fortune i happened to have a random sheet that was a close match. It's always a pleasure to get materials to easily match with historical colours and how they've faded over time.

This book came in missing its spine and some text on the cover. the main focus for the owner was to make the book useable for her children again. That repair is easy enough so I tried my hand at something I dont often get to do and thats fixing missing elements to an image or text. I managed to recreate the missing letters with what the little image editing software I own. However I'm no printer and the machines I have at my disposal weren't able to totally color match with thr original red but matched by good fortune the new spine color quite well. Overall im quite pleased and am happy the front cover title makes sense again. I hope further opportunities arise where i can further practice using modern tech solutions to assist with the repair of a book.

This behemoth of a bible came in with the usual issues for ones of this size. The boards were ripped off the book and the spine had also come apart. The weight of these books works against themselves as they weren't constructed with enough internal supports to bear the load. I managed to make two new stripped endbands using all original material as the original binder was thankfully generous with how much material he used. A new spine was made and the worn down leather on the boards was given a leather treatment and some dye work to bring it back to its original look. These bibles always are a lot of fun to work on with their many issues.

These two books arrived with some spine damage that needed to be addressed in order for them to be fully enjoyed. Both books are lavishly illustrated by the famous Gustav Doré. Paradise Lost had the original spine still attached to an ill fated repair attempt. Dantes inferno was worse off. The entire textblock needed resewing along with a new spine.

This encyclopedia came in without a spine and a fair bit of tape in am attempt to keep what was left together. After removing the various types of tape used over the years it was onto flattening and repairing some damaged pages. One notable example was the page with the image of Aristotle. A sympathetic coloured spine was added. The book is back in service and should serve the family for many years to come!

Haven't had the pleasure of rebinding a Tolkien book before so this was a pleasure. This much loved copy was repaired and given a green hardcover in homage to the original first edition cover colour. The books original covers were kept. The original spine was turned into a bookmark but isn't pictured. The light grey endpapers were chosen to make any possible inscription easy to read.