01/13/2025 | Jessica Smith, Collections Coordinator at The Museum of the Grand Prairie

In today’s Collection Corner, we are going to veer off a bit and take a stroll around the Conservation Col de Sac, if you will. Specifically, let’s dive into paper and book conservation and the wild world of adhesives!

Archeologists date evidence of the use of adhesives in Southern Africa as far back as 280,000-25,000 years ago during the Middle Stone Ages. But when we narrow it down specifically to book adhesives, we can jump to Medieval Europe when book adhesives were being used by combining an eclectic variety of ingredients that included eggs, animal hides, fish, and even something called “cheese glue” made by curdling milk with lime. As time moved on and technology advanced, book glues have become more stable, especially with the advent of synthetic products.

                                                                                              

The collections object I most recently had the pleasure to work with is a 1913 plat book documenting Champaign County land ownership. Because we have two other plat books from this year in our museum collection in much healthier condition, we made the decision to disbound this copy to prolong preservation and to increase access by digitizing the unbound pages. Based on the year, the glue used to bind the plat book is most likely derived from animal collagen. 

The first step was to remove the rusty, brittle staples, leather cover cloth, and backing board which was already partially detached. I did  this by carefully bending and prying the staples out of the text block (many broke and crumbled in the process). I then painstakingly pulled the cover and backing board away from the spine using a metal lab spatula until the bulk of it was removed. I was left with leather remnants, the hinge cloth or mull, and a thick, hard slathering of adhesive. When I tried to continue using the spatula to scrape the glue away, it quickly became apparent that I would need reinforcements to keep from damaging the pages.                                                

                                                                                        

Enter the magical substance that is wheat starch paste (WSP)! WSP is commonly used in several areas of book binding and book and paper conservation as an adhesive. Its use has been linked to binding agents used in Pompeian wall paintings. It is quite simply a combination of conservation grade wheat starch, distilled water, and heat. Through a delicate cooking process that includes elements of chemistry3 I won’t go into (you’re welcome), and some straining and cooling, the wheat starch becomes gelatinous (think, the consistency of wet mochi). From that gel-state, water can then be reintroduced for different needs of varying levels of viscosity.

Fun fact: WSP can also be used as a poultice. Because the WSP is composed of a small percentage of water but is not ‘wet’, it will rehydrate, soften, and remove old adhesives without damaging the paper product or leaving tide lines or water stains.

                                                                                                         

Armed with a fresh batch of WSP, I spread the gel onto the exposed spine and allowed it to sit and “poultice” for several minutes. Then I gently and very slowly scraped the newly loosened century-old adhesive off (along with leather fragments and the webbed hinge cloth). As you can see in the above image, it would take several passes to get the surface clear of the former book spine components. It would take even longer to carefully release each page from the text block.

                                                                                             

Page-by-page, I scraped old glue away as I separated the edge of the paper from the spine—despite the adhesive had mostly been released and removed, the tiniest section of edging was still fairly stuck together. Long story short (sort of), the plat book was disbound! It will be stored flat in a custom archival box and await digitization. Yay science!

 

 

 

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Paul. (2014, June 17). Figure 179 - Formed Shoulder of the Spine, Bookbinding Diagram - iBookBinding - Bookbinding Tutorials & Resources. iBookBinding - Bookbinding Tutorials & Resources. https://www.ibookbinding.com/ru/figure-179-formed-shoulder-of-the-spine-bookbinding-diagram/

Pickwoad, N. (2019). Bookbinding. Wiley Online Library, 111–127. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119018193.ch8

Prisby, R. et al. (2024) Wheat-based glues in conservation and Cultural Heritage: (dis)solving the proteome of flour and starch pastes and their adhering properties, Journal of proteome research. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11077587/

The Book and Paper Group of the American Institute for Conservation. (n.d.). Methylcellulose & sodium carboxymethylcellulose: Uses in paper conservation. https://cool.culturalheritage.org/coolaic/sg/bpg/annual/v01/bp01-04.html

The sticky history of adhesives - JSTOR DAILY. (n.d.). https://daily.jstor.org/the-history-of-adhesives/

Image: 10. Rebinding an Old Book Tutorial - iBookBinding - Bookbinding Tutorials & Resources

Image: From the Book of Trades by Jost Amman and Hans Sachs (1568)