Our Conservator not only works on the collections we hold here, but also does external work for different clients as well. In this week’s blog, she explains her recent work on a Roll of Honour from the Tank Museum.
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In the Royal Armoured Corps Memorial Room at The Tank Museum, two leather bound volumes record the names of over 12,000 soldiers who died in service between 1939 and 1945. These can be viewed by members of the public tracing family members who served in the Cavalry, Yeomanry and Royal Tank Regiments plus various infantry battalions that were converted to tanks and, later, the Reconnaissance Corps.
Additional sheets held within a temporary binder recorded the men who had died after 1945. In 2019 I was asked to bind these loose sheets to match the two existing volumes.
The loose sheets were brought to the History Centre along with one of the existing volumes so that I could match the binding as closely as possible. The bindings have a leather joint incorporated into the endpapers, a style that is often reserved for special bindings due to the time and materials involved in construction. The result is a leather border all around the inside of the boards, enclosing a window called a doublure, which can be filled with silk, leather or, as in this case, marble paper.
The loose sheets were first trimmed to remove the line of punched holes along the spine edge and ten sheets at a time were oversewn together to create sections. Endpapers were made using a variation of the ‘zigzag’ construction, with marble paper and black leather strips. These were then sewn together with the sections onto four linen tapes.
A thin glue was applied to the spine and a curve was created using a backing hammer. Paper flanges were added to the ends of the linen sewing supports and these were inserted into the boards.
The next job was to sew endbands onto both ends of the spine using a red leather support and red and gold silks. After this, the spine was lined with paper, and leather strips were added to create the appearance of raised bands.
The spine was then covered with red leather and the boards covered with black leather and left to dry overnight. The leather from the endpapers were adhered onto the inside of the boards and windows were cut to accommodate the marble paper, creating the doublure.
Once all the leather and marble paper were dry, the leather was gold tooled. Lines and lettering were made by heating brass tools and applying them through gold foil.
This binding was a joy to make and I feel privileged to be a small part of honouring the men named within this volume. All three volumes are now back on display at the Tank Museum.
I Bound the two Books of Remembrance . Working at H. Lings bindery in around 1969 . Frank Brown Dorchester