on washing old books
looking at a room full of medieval manuscripts, i stopped to watch a video about the restoration process. the manuscript was cracked and grubby, its binding falling apart. they unbound it, washed the pages, stitched it back together in the traditional way.
an older australian (i’m guessing retired printer) was watching with his wife. “they’re lucky it was vellum,” he said, of cleaning the pages, “if it had’ve been paper, they’d’ve been buggered.”