| Abstract: | Summaries. The topic of priorities in book conservation tempts one to ask, what is to have precedence over what? Such terms as invisible, tooled, coloured aesthetic, durable, reversible, original, facsimile, reconstruction, falsification all come into play. However, if you analyse them and find out what they have in common, you will find at least three closely connected concepts: technique, materials and aesthetics. To sort out the customary priorities between these three concepts is a simple matter if you first ask the question 'who owns the book which is to be restored?' Is it a public library, a private collector or an antiquarian bookseller? The most important thing for the bookseller - besides the value of the book - is that it should look good after it is repaired, so that the potential purchaser has the impression that the binding is genuinely old and undamaged. Invisible repair, colouring and filling out missing portions of the text are considered of greater importance than the durability of the repairs actually carried out. The repair work will be judged successful if the book looks as if it has never been repaired. The demands of the private collector are very different. For him, it is important to keep as much as possible of the original material of the book, so as not to disturb the character of the book. The volume is allowed to look used and fragile, that is, to look its age. If individual parts have to be replaced, great care must be taken in choosing the right material. It must be as close to the original in appearance as possible, and sometimes may even be old material itself. When working for a public library, the priority in book conservation has to be first the techniques used in the construction of the binding, secondly, the choice of material and thirdly, the aesthetic consequences of the chosen method of repair. To this end, we will give some examples of what we understand by these concepts, how they work together in book restoration, and how they can cause conflicts in practice. In doing so, we also explain our own attitudes to the question of priorities in book conservation. |
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