Period Fine Bindings

Bookbinding, Conservation, and Restoration

Blog Posts

Paul Tronson – Master Bookbinder
Period Fine Bindings
email: paul@periodfinebindings.com

A Master Bookbinder – restoring antiquarian books, Bibles and objets de virtu to period using original tools and techniques.
An expert at creating and recreating authentic traditional bindings using old materials and ancient formulae. Significant & considerable experience in the restoration of ‘lost’ or ‘fatally’ damaged work from the 10th to 19th Century; vellum, parchment, illuminated manuscripts and scrolls.

Bible Book Binding

September 19, 2025

This site is regularly updated

For all your bookbinding and book restoration enquiries Email: paul@periodfinebindings.com

Bookbinding: Ancient Bibles-Family Bibles

Click on pictures to enlarge

Bookbinding & Book Restoration of a Geneva Bible

Bookbinding & Large Family Bibles

Bookbinding & Book Restoration – Bibles:
Full restoration of the Bible starts with carefully releasing the cover from the Bible, removing the linings from the spine of the Bible and then breaking down the sewing to the original sections in order to make necessary repairs, remove any stains or re-size brittle or damp sheets.

Once stripped the total damage of the Bible can be assessed for restoration before making the hand marbled endpapers It is also necessary to determine what kind of glue was used in the original binding of the Bible in order to successfully separate the sections.

With the leaves of the Bible all restored it is then marked out for sewing, in this case the
Bible was sewn on sunken cords, but they were cut off and not laced into
the boards as the style required a hollowback and ‘pseudo split boards’ where an extra leaf is wrapped around the spine of the Bible to form a tongue which is inserted into the split board.

Bookbinding & Book Restoration: Bibles

After the Bible has been re-sewn, rounded and backed, headbands made, sewn-in and the hollowback formed, it is now time to restore the original covers of the Bible, first removing the brass bosses and lifting
the original endpapers and edges very carefully.

The leather is then selected for the Bible hand dyed with Picric acid, Potassium
Tartrate and finally Ferrous Sulphate matching the original dyes used when the Bible was first bound.

With the leather cut and pared it is now time to re-back the spine of the Bible and turn in the edges

Click on the pictures to enlarge

Bookbinding & Book Restoration of Bibles

Now the Bible is set up for gilding, first blind tooled and ‘glared’ and afterwards tooled in 23 carat gold leaf. The first operation is ‘rolling off’ the spine of the Bible using patterned fillets and straight line pallets. Then each panel of the Bible is tooled using a series of small hand tools comprising of more than 100 individual impressions per panel.

A leather label is then applied to the spine of the Bible and the title hand lettered. The whole Bible is then hand polished before the brass bosses are straightened out and re-fitted.