A salute to the University of Cincinnati’s 28th President |

It was a great honor for the Preservation Lab to be a part of the University of Cincinnati’s farewell photo album for departing President Santa Ono.

The Lab was asked to make a special binding for the album. The Office of the Provost provided the Lab with single sheets of photographs of President Ono’s tenure here at UC. Since the pages were single sheets, the finished book would need to have a simple structure: a double fan adhesive binding. This structure is great for single sheets, providing a strong binding that allows the text block to be opened almost flat without causing the pages to separate from each other. The adhesive is pasted onto the spine of the text block with a double fanning technique, where the pages are fanned in both directions allowing the adhesive to reach about 1 mm into the text block pages. After the pages are fanned in both directions, the spine of the text block received a lining of Cambric Cloth to provide support and an attachment for the cover. The spine was also lined with a handmade paper to prevent even further the spine from breaking when the book is open.

Preparing the text block

The cover for President Ono’s photo album was a cloth quarter binding with marbled paper. For this type of binding, the spine was covered with a cloth and the boards were covered with marble paper, with approximately 1-3 proportion between the two materials (quarter binding). The marble paper used was made by the Preservation Lab’s Preservation Librarian, Holly Prochaska, using a variety of techniques all including tones of UC colors black and red

Various black, red, and white marbled papers

Selection of marbled paper created by Holly

Once the text block was made with custom endbands, the process of making the cover began. The endbands were created with small pieces of the same marble paper has the cover, rolled with a small thread. From the variety of marbled papers, the one pictured front and center above was selected. To continue with the theme of UC colors, a black cloth was chosen for the spine lining.

All the different materials needed to make the cover

After the cover was made, and the text block was cased in, a title was created. Using the Lab’s hot stamper several title samples for the spine were made with different materials in gold and silver foil. A silver title stamped on a black cloth was chosen, since it best matched the theme and colors of the cover.