Preserving pages of history: Nevada bookbinder restores old, rare books

WELLINGTON - In the age of Kindle, iPad and the Internet, many have predicted the end of the printed book.

Even if that's the future for most readers, just the opposite is true at Jurey's Bookbinding Services, where much of the work is dedicated to preserving and restoring very special books.

Clyde Jurey says he has more work than he wants and, at age 70, he's trying to be more selective and cut down on the load.

"After I retired from the printing office, I wanted to do a few Bibles to supplement our income a little bit," Jurey said.

"This was supposed to be a relaxing job," said his wife, Sandy. "We were amazed how many people were looking for a bookbinder."

Contrary to what they expected when they opened the shop, Sandy said the customers aren't the "old folks." They're people in their 30s, "looking for their history," she said.

The Jureys' workshop in Wellington, 65 miles from Carson City, is stacked with projects including several very old, large and lavishly illustrated family Bibles with embossed leather covers and gold leaf decorations. They sit on and around the tools of his trade including hand-cranked presses, cutters, drills and cases of different fonts of type - some of them more than 100 years old.

One massive Bible sits on a workbench, its covers tattered and broken, the yellowing, brittle pages separating so badly it looks more like a stack of old paper than a book.

"There are an awful lot of hours in one of these," Jurey said. "The first thing I'll do is take it completely apart down to the pages. We'll save the cover. Then I'll re-sew the signatures."

Old books and, even today, high quality, archival books, are sewn rather than glued with, for example, 8 or 10 sheets of paper each printed both sides. Folded in half and sewn together at the center line, that makes what is called a signature. When opened to the center sheet, the stitching holding the signature together is visible at the fold between the pages. Those signatures are then bound into a book by sewing them all together and attaching the covers and spine. Nearly all the work is done by hand. If possible, it'll get its old cover and binding refurbished and restored. If not, it will get a new cover appropriate for its age and original design.

"I try to copy the old book as much as I can," he said, - often down to the decorations on the old binding. "But I can't create what's not there."

He estimated eight full days to reconstruct the Bible but Sandy said it would probably take much longer than that. The cost for that type of project, he said, will run a customer about $650 - which Sandy quickly said is far less than some other binders charge.

The Bibles, he said, often contain family pictures, and record marriages and other events important to people trying to preserve their family history. Jurey makes special efforts to protect those bits of information.

One of his recent projects was for the Nevada Historical Society: A ledger from the Brown and Tomlinson Store in Virginia City recording customer purchases and debts which was found beneath an old building in the dirt.

"I've done two of them," Jurey said, whose family has been in Nevada several generations. "I got real interested in doing that book because part of my family was in there, in the entries.

"When I really started taking it apart page by page, I took a tuna can of sand out of it," he said. Now the ledger has been returned to the society, its pages sewn back together with a brand new cover.

He said that cover isn't the same as the original because cost has become more of a factor, often discouraging a full, authentic, historical restoration.

"You have to do things within reason," he said. "All these historical societies and museums are strapped."

So the replacement binding and covers may not be leather and there may be some other compromises in restoring different books.

But not for some valuable projects such as the Latin Bible printed in 1614 which he restored. He said that book is now the property of the Vatican.

"It was terribly time consuming," he said.

He also did a set of Christian-themed books for a Houston bookstore owner that Sandy said contained some of the most unusual and beautiful paintings -including one full color piece of artwork illustrating the crucifixion from the point of view of what Jesus would have seen from the cross.

He said the owner told him she paid $10,000 for the set.

"Because of our work, they sold for a very nice price," he said.

A project just arrived is a set of two books, Gibson's Codex of the Church of England, dated 1713. He said the private collector wants the full restoration treatment including leather covers and the raised, sewn hubs on the spine of the books.

A 1907 book titled "The Presidents," he said, had a fancy seal on the front cover made of plaster of Paris. He said he had to make a protective plywood cover with a cutout to protect the plaster seal while working on it. Another project was "Famous Women," printed in 1864.

A set of 40 books sent from England because the owners couldn't find a suitable bookbinder there is now in Westminster Abbey.

He also did an antique Czechoslovakian cook book. But he was stymied when he got to replacing the title on the new cover because he couldn't read it and doesn't own a typeface in the Cyrillic alphabet. The owner had to provide him with an appropriate title to use.

He said he has done "a lot of genealogy" for the Mormon Church, work for Christian Scientists and other religious groups.

Jurey doesn't just do historic and antique books. He turns out the biennial, bound collections of Nevada Supreme Court opinions as well as the bound legislative statutes from each session. More mundane work includes binding monthly medical journals into annuals for Nevada physicians, but he said that is fading as more and more doctors get those journals electronically. Jurey started learning his trade 51 years ago when he signed on to work for his uncle, bookbinder at A. Carlisle and Co. in Reno. After eight or nine years there, he went to work for the state printing office in Carson City. He retired 24 years later as Bindery Supervisor.

One of the problems with books people bring to him is fixing their attempts to make repairs.

"If you want to repair your own book," said Sandy, "don't use Elmer's glue on it - and stay away from scotch tape."

He said some people pour glue down the inside of the binding: "Don't do that either."

"It doesn't mean it can't be fixed but it makes it more difficult," he said.

Jurey urged people who write inside a book to use the fly sheet - one of the blank pages between the cover and the title page of the book - not the inside of the cover because that will force him to cover up whatever was written on the cover when repairs are made or remove it if a new cover is required.

He said he doesn't advertise because word of mouth already brings him more work than he can handle. That workload is proof that, despite predictions the electronic age will replace the printed book, there is obviously still great demand from people who want to preserve books special to them as well as to preserve those books which contain Nevada's and the nation's history.