Bad book on the shelf? Ken Gilbert can help

Stockbridge bookbinder gives old books a second life

BY AINA DE LAPPARENT ALVAREZ

STOCKBRIDGE

For most of us, repairing an old book means sticking down tape to keep the pages together.

That’s a horrifying sight to a professional bookbinder like Ken Gilbert, who came to his centuries-old craft after an earlier career. “It takes the material away with it. Tape should never be used on a book,” he said.

Bookbinding requires more sophisticated equipment than tape, though it need not be new. Gilbert, who lives near West Stockbridge during the summer, says his main tools are a board shear (a hand-operated big paper cutter) and a guillotine, a different type of paper cutter that can slice through a whole book. He also has a printer for the gold lettering on labels and different types of presses.

These methods have survived centuries. “We’re still using the tools that bookbinders used at the beginning of last century. They were made so well in the Victorian times,” said Gilbert.

Gilbert, 72, learned his craft later in life, after a career in corporate telecommunications when he was looking for a retirement occupation. At an old book auction, he spotted a mid-19th century copy of “Vanity Fair,” a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray. The book was in shambles, but he found a bookbinder who restored it.

“I just fell in love at that moment. I said ‘I have to learn how to do this,’” said Gilbert.

In 2008, he enrolled at Boston’s North Bennet Street School. The school, which also teaches jewelry making and carpentry, among other crafts, offers what’s believed to be the only full-time bookbinding program in North America.

Coming back to school at the age of 58 seemed daunting at first. “The oldest person in the class after me was 40. My teacher was younger than me. I had some small trepidation about it. But once I was in it and started working, it was two absolutely marvelous years. I made friends with classmates that I still have today,” he said.

Besides giving him a community, learning a new set of skills changed his relationship with work. “I look at life differently, because work is half of your waking life. If you’re looking at work as not being your life, but working so that you can live, then you’re wasting half of your life,” said Gilbert. “You have to make work an enjoyable part of your life.”

Gilbert says repairing old books connects him with the past. Many days, he crosses paths with history. Once, the Mayflower Society asked him to make a book box for a 400-year-old Bible.

“I am touched by old books. Knowing that there’s a tactile connection with people in the past,” said Gilbert.

In his second home near West Stockbridge, Gilbert looks with glee at a 1693 history book about the reign of King William. “It’s written in the style of the 16th century. And talking about their perspective on what happened from that day.”

But above all, Gilbert is captivated by how books used to be made. He explains that, until the late 19th century, most paper came from recycled materials. Because the emerging printing industry had trouble sourcing materials, rag pickers, usually poor people, would find or buy used fabrics and fibers from clothes and sell them to papermakers.

Gilbert is fascinated by books that carry the mundane past into the present. One time, a man gave him an old diary that he had found while removing plaster from a house in Westborough.

The diary was kept by a woman named Nancy Avery White who lived in Westborough between 1783 and 1864.

“At the time there were objects that people felt should be left with a house rather than with other people,” Gilbert said.

“She’d write, ‘We picked apples today.’ And then maybe the next day ‘we made pies today’ or ‘slaughtered a pig today.’ You can kind of see the progression of life, the way that it was lived at that time.” He donated the diary to the American Antiquarian Society.

Most of his commissions come from booksellers, like West Stockbridge’s Shaker Mill bookstore, to restore value to rare books for collectors.

But in part thanks to his affordable prices — from $50 to $350 depending on the nature of the repair — many individuals have approached him asking for help to recover books with sentimental value. They often are a little skeptical.

“They ask ‘Can this be fixed?’ My answer is ‘I can fix any book!’ Because I can fix any book. But people don’t know that,” Gilbert said. “Many people who have never had a book fixed before, or never seen one that was fixed, don’t know that books can be repaired. They’ve just never thought about it in their life, if a book starts falling out, they throw it or give it away.”

His favorite commission was repairing a grandmother’s cookbook.

“She found another recipe here or there or she’d write it down, stick it in the pages of the book. Eventually, it caused the book to break,” said Gilbert. He repaired the spine and made a book box with a drawer for the hand-written recipes. “Now it’s all in one place, together. This guy actually shed a tear when I gave it to him. It’s quite amazing. It shows how much we interact with books in an intimate fashion.”

Working with books can have a far less glamorous side. One day, the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover recommended him for a book repair. They told him it was a job they wouldn’t usually take on. But a woman had called the center crying about how important it was for the books to be repaired for her boyfriend.

Gilbert was elated that the center had passed him work. “This is my big chance, getting this work from NDCC. This is fantastic! I’m getting into the fast lane now,” he said he remembers thinking.

After accepting, the woman called him, profusely apologizing for how unusual the request was. He reassured her and she finally explained that a cat had soiled the book.

“This is not a niche that I want, the pee and poop niche,” Gilbert said. Unfortunately, he had to deal with mice feces on another occasion.

Putting aside occasional unpleasant assignments, Gilbert finds comfort in putting his mark on objects that will outlive him. “Eventually they’ll last long enough that nobody will know who did that. But it will be something that somebody will enjoy having nonetheless. I think of all those things as going forward in time,” Gilbert said. ■