State Normal and Industrial School (now UNC Greensboro) once offered sewing classes for the young women attending the school. Along with preparing students to be teachers, the school's Domestic Science Department was also "concerned with fostering the skills necessary for women to become good wives and mothers." No doubt sewing could be a useful skill to have during the early 20th century.

Three sewing books were received for treatment. Unfortunately, the substrate pages of the albums are quite discolored and brittle due to the acidity of the paper. Nonetheless, the sewing samples are incredibly intricate and interesting, especially considering they were all sewn by hand. Though there was not much to be done at the time about the condition of the substrate pages, I was able to create post binders to better protect them. 

Often, paper manufactured in the late 19th and early 20th century was created from wood pulp. The lignin, an organic substance that makes the cell walls in plants rigid or woody, in wood pulp contains acid that degrades the paper over time. The “Brittle Book Era” refers to this time period when paper manufacturers were under pressure to create a large quantity of paper very cheaply in order to meet the demand of the publishing industry. The wood pulp was cheaper to process into paper but resulted in very brittle paper over time. When brittle paper is torn, or more accurately “broken”, it is difficult to mend as the mend ends up being stronger than the paper being repaired and it simply breaks again along the edge of the mend. Though there are other treatments that could be tried, time limits meant that creating post binders was the right solution.

The first step of stabilizing the pages was to put each page in a protective Mylar sleeve. This type of sleeve is often referred to as an L-sleeve because the edges are sealed along two sides in an L shape. They serve as a protective barrier both for the item inside the sleeve as well as anything it might come into contact with, such as neighboring sewing samples in this case. The next step was to drill holes near the spine edge so that the posts could be inserted through the covers and the block of pages. However, due to the thickness of the sewing samples, spacers were needed at the spine edge between some of the pages or else the spine would be much narrower than the pages which would result in a wedge shaped book that bulges open at the fore edge. 

Spacers of mat board were cut to the height of the text block and drilled with a drill press (see pictures). The Mylar pages were also drilled based on the same template so that the holes will align when the binder is assembled. Custom covers were made and drilled. Once all the parts were prepared, the post binding was actually quite simple to assemble. 

Though it is common to have an extra allowance of space on the spine edge of the Mylar so that the pages can turn, these sleeves were left even larger so that the sewing book pages would not have to flex as much. The original stamped cover designs of the sewing books were removed and adhered to the front of the new post binders.

The post binders are a versatile option for protecting the pages of a book. In this case, they may not be the perfect solution, but they have succeeded in stabilizing the pages and making them a bit safer to handle.