The first in-house “bindery” was established at The Library Company of Philadelphia in 1954 by Fritz Eberhardt, a master bookbinder from Germany. Current Chief of Conservation Jennifer W. Rosner came to the Library Company in 1980. The conservation department employs four part-time conservators who are responsible for continuing the tradition of collections care. Among their responsibilities are: collection maintenance, including selecting appropriate housing materials and creating custom storage for books and other items in the collection; conserving individual items and working with curators to determine the extent of treatment; establishing guidelines for environmental controls throughout collection storage and exhibition areas of the building, and monitoring temperature and humidity levels; writing and updating a disaster and recovery plan; matting, framing and making custom book supports for exhibitions; and preparing materials that are going out on loan to other institutions.

 

In addition to their responsibilities as conservators, Chief of Conservation Jennifer Rosner and Conservator Andrea Krupp have been researching many aspects of the 19th-century book. Their work in this area has resulted in an exhibition, several articles and book reviews, and the creation of the Database of 19th-century Cloth Bindings that is a rich source of information about the structure, materials and appearance of cloth covered books from 1800 to 1899.

 

Still in development, this site will provide links to the various aspects of our research, including:

 

On-line access to The Database of 19th-century Cloth Bindings, a searchable database of approximately 3000 cloth bindings. Each entry records details of structure and appearance, such as sewing pattern, endpaper construction, headbands, marks or tickets that identify binder or engraver, and cloth grain pattern. Most of the records will include a scanned image of the binding.

 

The Catalogue of 19th-century Bookcloth Grains (CBG). Developed in conjunction with the database, the catalogue illustrates every bookcloth grain previously published in all the major reference works on this topic, as well as new grains identified in our collection. The CBG illustrates 222 different bookcloth grains.

 

Pre-ornamented Bookcloth. This section will feature an article on a previously unrecorded cloth ornamentation technique, which was first published in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Vol 94, no. 2, June 2000. Scans of all the identified pre-ornamented designs, as well as an updated bibliography, will bring our original work up to date.

 

"Making a Case for Cloth: Publishers’ Cloth Case Bindings, 1830-1900." An online version of our 1995 exhibition.