Bookbinding Serendipity

Photo: One of the original endsheets had a relative’s signature, so I repaired it and sewed it in. 

Years ago, my friend and bookbinding mentor, Linda Rollins, gave me some printed marbled papers she had inherited from her teacher when she bought his bookbinding business. This week, I completed a rebinding of Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, published in the early 1900s. Its original endsheets were too acidic to re-use, and the pastedowns were missing. I rummaged through my paper stash and discovered that my decades-old papers were the identical pattern, reproduced in a lighter shade of green. So, fellow hoarders, take heart. There's always a chance that we really will use those scraps of paper and fabric that we’ve squirreled away for decades.