1940's Pop-up carousel book.

Friends brought me this wonderful Cinderella children's book for treatment.

The construction is a case binding with nine heavy pages with guards all made of board, two are the covers and have a cloth spine. Remarkably, considering its age and use it is still all together and stable enough not to need rebinding

The cover boards are decorated with paper and cloth which shows a great deal of wear and tear especially the dog-eared and abraded corners. The boards also appear bowed and uneven and may have suffered water damage at some point. The whole is designed to open out into a carousel display book, held open with a leather strap and clasp, which is now torn and lost.

 Paper mechanics.
There are six sections or scenes that tell the story, made up of multiple layers of paper engineering, most of which are still intact and stable. The media is coloured lithograph prints on paper. Sections within the book appear bright and colourful and have had less light exposure, where as the edges of each page are severely faded. Also the outer most paper components, two or three layers show the most damage in the form of tears, folds and creases and some pressure sensitive tape and staining. Near the spine there are also some tears to what would be described as the backing scenes, causes by years of use. The pages also appear cockled and uneven although this does not prevent the enjoyment of the book. The manufacturer of the book recommends displaying it with a light from above to illuminate the colours and highlight details, this may have contributed to fading and degradation of the paper.
Translated from Italian.

• • In order to obtain all the plastic and coloristic effect of the teatros book, it is necessary to illuminate from the spra (hanging string) with a lamp light with the possibility to display a cardboard cone

Treatment consisted of surface cleaning through out with soft brush where possible, taking care with the cloth spine.

Internal repairs were undertaken with Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste without dismantling the binding, this was done using clamps because of the 3D nature of the book. Whenever possible the repairs were done flat so that they could be weighted properly for adhesion and drying.

Re-alignment of the tears and paper engineering was a slow process with some repairs needing to be done in sections and was governed by access to each page.

For visual integrity toned Japanese tissue was used on the decorated areas of the work. Minor in-painting was undertaken to improved aesthetics.

Before and after treatment images.