Just learned that old book cloth can actually damage leather bindings over time, found it in a 1985 conservator's handbook I picked up at an estate sale

Had no idea the acids in certain vintage cloths could migrate and stain the leather, has anyone else run into this problem with mixed material books on their shelf?

2 comments

2 Comments

kelly3851mo ago

Ruined a nice 1880s Shakespeare set that way. The cloth bled right onto the leather spines, looked like a bad tie-dye experiment. My own fault for keeping them crammed together for twenty years. Now I check every binding like it's a crime scene.

lilykelly1mo ago

Used to think that whole acid migration thing was overblown, just book nerds getting dramatic about nothing. Then I had to clean out a storage unit and found a full set of 1920s encyclopedias where the cloth spines had basically fused with the leather boards, completely ruined them. Total nightmare, especially after what @kelly385 described with that Shakespeare set - that's exactly the kind of damage I saw. Now I separate anything with cloth and leather by at least a few inches with some acid-free paper in between, better safe than sorry. Really opened my eyes to how careful you have to be with mixed material books, they don't play nice together long term.