Visited the bindery at Oxford's Bodleian and saw them using wheat paste for spine lining

I went on a tour of the conservation workshop at the Bodleian Library in Oxford last month and noticed they still use traditional wheat paste for spine linings instead of modern PVA. The conservator argued it's more reversible and kinder to old leather, but my teacher back home swears PVA is stronger and lasts longer. Which do you think holds up better for a book that's actually getting handled regularly, not just sitting in a rare books room?

2 comments

2 Comments

carr.xena16d ago

There is a small but important point about the wheat paste they use at the Bodleian. It isn't just regular flour and water like you might make at home. They typically cook it to a specific consistency and often add a bit of fungicide to keep mold from growing in the damp English climate. Your teacher is right that PVA is stronger for a book that sees heavy handling, but the real challenge with that glue is that it can become brittle over decades and is nearly impossible to remove without damaging the leather. For a book in regular circulation at a public library, I would probably go with a modern reversible PVA or even a starch paste mix, but for the rare stuff at Oxford, the pure wheat paste makes perfect sense because reversibility matters more than raw holding power.

the_margaret16d ago

And what @carr.xena said about reversibility is the whole ball game really. People don't realize how many old books have been wrecked by well meaning repairs with glues that seemed great at the time. I've seen books from the 70s where the PVA has gone so hard and yellow you can't even open the pages without cracking them. The wheat paste might sound old fashioned and like something out of a history book, but it's honestly the safest bet for anything precious. If you ever have to undo a repair with wheat paste you can usually get it off with just a damp sponge and some patience. That's not something you can say about other glues once they've set.