These were a series of eight scrapbooks that form part of the J. Lyons Collection held at LMA. They were initially flagged up for conservation through a reader request. The media within varies widely between each book – some containing simple newsprint advertisements, whilst others containing whole advertising boards and packaging, through to window transfers.

Treatment was carried out on five of the scrapbooks. Two were too badly damaged and thought to be too time consuming (funding will be sought to carry out the work on these) and one just required repackaging. Below are the treatment details of one of these books.

LMA/4364/01/002

FORMAT DETAILS

• H: 570mm, W: 370mm,  D: 105mm.
• Quarter bound with black leather and book cloth facing. The leather is gold tooled with the title on the spine and on the edges of the leather on the boards.
• Originally a spring back hollow with a leather lining that goes around the spine and onto the boards under the paste-downs.
• The paste-downs on the boards consist of the first four pages of the text block with final layer of  silver paper to cover them. The inner joints are lined with black cloth tape.
• Pages in text block are a cream coloured thick wove paper. 18 sections in total. In between each of these is an extra section, about 2.5cm wide, added as compensation.
• There are 110 pages with items adhered to them.
• The items attached within the text block include; newspaper clippings, card packaging examples, artwork on paper, photographs and reproductions of packaging artwork.

CONDITION

Binding:

• The binding was in very poor condition. Although the leather was still intact on the joints, it was severely torn with bits missing at the head and tail of the spine. Almost all the black surface of the leather had worn off on the spine and much of the gold tooling too. There were multiple abrasions to the leather on the sides.
• The boards were soft on the corners and bottom edges. The corners had worn away and the layers of pulp that make up the boards were delaminating.
• One of the sewing tapes had broken at the front joint.
• The hollow was very soft, brittle and no longer functioning properly.
• The paste-downs had lifted at the front along the inner joint by about 10cm.
• The first section of the text block was very loose due the broken tape and brakes in the sewing. The sewing on the next three sections was also very loose around the tapes too. The last three sections were also loose.

Album pages:

• These were generally in O.K. condition. Most of the damage had occurred at the front where a few pages were loose and the folios had split. There were multiple tears to the very first page. Throughout the rest of the text block there were numerous pages with small edge tears.
• There was also a lot of surface dirt throughout the book.
• There were five or six sections that had had pages torn out leaving the other half of the folio loose.

Items within:

• At the front of the book, some loose items (approx. 20) had been inserted. These included; A sample of card packaging (possibly to make a lantern), sheets of newspaper which were very damaged and discoloured, eight pieces of a torn poster of the English counties, screen printed and lithographic advertising flyers, and a small, oval, board sign.
• There were small areas of white mould on a few items in the first section.
• There was discolouration to the cream text block paper due to acidity of the items adhered and ink transfer.
• Some items looked scuffed where the ink has transferred onto the adjacent page.
• Some of the larger folded items were distorted, creased and torn where they had been folded into the book.
• There was also damage to many items which had been adhered too close to the edge of the text block.
• Some pages had areas that had been cut out and then reattached by supporting it with another sheet of paper, adhered with animal glue. This glue, in most cases, was very discoloured and failing.

TREATMENT

Loose items at the front:

• The sections of torn poster loose at the front were locally flattened. It was found to be two maps, each torn into 4, probably from where they had been folded. There were both humidified and then lined with Kingsawa paper and put into polyester sleeves to be stored separately.
• The newspapers seemed to bear no reference to Horniman’s Teas and so were given to an archivist to determine if they could be relevant.
• At this point the text block was removed from the cover to allow cleaning of the spine and repair of the broken sewing.
• Two more loose poster fragments were found at the front of the scrapbook. These had come from the edge of a poster adhered to the first page in the text block. These were reattached to the poster by supporting the verso with RK5, the still missing area between them was filled with Queen Anne Wove paper.

• Another loose page from within the book was repaired and positioned back within the text block.

Text block and sewing:

• The first four and last 3 sections (plus the interleaving compensation sections) were removed from the text block as the sewing on these was already broken and they were the most damaged generally.
• Extensive repair work was carried out on the first and last sections to strengthen the fold in each folio.
• For all sections, the first and last folio of each was reinforced with RK17 on the fold at the head and tail.
• Three more sections needed to be removed from within the text block, as they all had pages torn out so leaving loose sheets. To each of the loose sheets a flap was added by adhering 2 layers of RK17, which meant the loose sheets could be sewn back in.
• Any sections left in the text block with broken threads were reapired by adding on new thread and attaching it to the kettle stitch.
• The sewing tapes were freed from the threads going round them by applying a poultice to soften the adhesive. New tapes were attached to the ends of the old ones, which were then pulled out so pulling the new ones into place.

• The loose sections, which had been deliberately removed, were sewn back onto the text block. A sewing support of hemp cord was added to the kettle stich to strengthen it.
• The spine could then be line with jap paper, unbleached cotton and finally an archival manila hollow (1 on, 2 off).
• Torn and loose items throughout were flattened (if necessary) through local humidification and pressing, repaired and reattached with RK tissue.

The cover:

• Once the text block was finished, the case could be tackled. The boards and cloth were consolidated with wheat starch paste and the linings that were still attached to inside of the leather were scraped back to a thin layer.
• Where the leather was torn and had missing areas at the head and tail, Aero-linen was adhered to the inside to offer support and fill the missing areas.
• The hollow was originally a springback, so once the old linings were removed the inside of the leather was lined with two layers of Archival Manila (to stiffen it) and a layer frey-not, which extended by 10mm onto the boards. This helped fill any excess space.
• The text block was cased back in and then, finally, the leather could be treated with SC6000 and the exposed Aero-linen toned with acrylic paint.