Status: 02.09.2024 10:43 a.m.
Book restorer Gudrun Kühl works on ancient, valuable works in her workshop in Hamburg. Her craft requires a great deal of knowledge, meticulousness and – literally – sensitivity.
At seven in the morning it is still in the flat commercial building. I am The workshop, which Gudrun Kühl shares with a furniture restorer and a painting restorer, is on the ground floor. It is bright, cool and dry, and a delicate scent of paper, wood and leather is in the air. Under the large daylight lamp, Gudrun Kühl bends over a book – a very old book. What can be saved, what is lost? “You only find out a lot of things once you have started or once you have removed something. If an old restoration is stuck to a spine, then I don’t really know what is underneath,” explains Kühl.
It begins with meticulous detective work
The book restorer carefully opens the cover, examines the parchment spine, the dusty pages: a “treatise on human anatomy” from 1608. “If there is an old stabilisation on the spine, something underneath must be broken. Usually it is.” “The spine is gone or the joints are torn. And then there is the effort of removing the old restoration,” says the restorer.
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Work without white cloth gloves
Gudrun Kühl works without white cloth gloves. Her hands have been freshly washed and dried. This allows her to touch and feel much more precisely. “Here, for example, the back of the parchment is very brittle. If I touch it with a cloth glove, I might get caught and small fibers will tear off the cloth glove – small fragments,” explained Kühl. It is really important for the work to have feeling in your hands.
Treasures in large, flat drawers
This historical book with colorful animal pictures is a gem.
Gudrun Kühl’s workshop is a well-organized treasure trove. The tall cupboard alone contains many a treasure in large, flat drawers – for example, restoration leather. “This is calf leather, which is individually dyed for the objects. It is natural-colored and depending on the color of the original, the color must be adjusted,” says Kühl. So-called Japanese paper is often used. The restorer holds a delicate sheet of paper up to the light that falls through the large windows. “This is something very special, it is very thin. You can see through it,” she emphasizes. The paper could be stuck over writing. “With mold-damaged paper, for example, which is so soft and fluffy. If you stick it over it, the paper is stabilized, but the writing is still easy to read. It is hardly noticeable,” she explains.
Family stories behind the books
This workshop is a realm of the analogue. Craft and art in one, material and sensitivity – the opposite of our digital world. There is no question that she enjoys her job. To illustrate this, Kühl takes a very old, heavy volume with large-format, coloured animal pictures from all over the world out of the cupboard. “What really touches my heart the most are the customers who come with family history or a book they read as a child,” says Kühl.
She has just received a book from a customer who came with her daughter. The daughter always leafed through the book as a child. The mother didn’t care at all what the restoration cost. “It was completely falling apart and she paid more than the 500 euros for the restoration of the book. That’s more important to me than a gallery that comes and says: ‘Make it beautiful again quickly! I want to sell it.’ Those are the nicer stories behind objects. Beautiful stories of a profession that is completely dedicated to saving books.
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