As a prelude to some future posts we will be doing about tooled leather bookbinding, we want to continue our examination of some of the ills to which book coverings are prone.
Generally speaking, the covers of books are much more prone to accidental damage than textblocks (pages). This usually is the result of poor handling and/or poor environmental storage conditions. Any of the problems depicted below (with the help of ILAB's excellent glossary) by definition take a book out of the category of Fine, reducing it to a lesser grade, the exact grade (Near Fine, Very Good+, Very Good, etc.) depending on the nature and severity of the damage. Such damage also reduces the value that the marketplace is likely to put on one's book.
One of the problems to which book coverings are subject is dampstaining, which is the result of a book cover being subject to prolonged exposure to a liquid such as water (or, in our modern world, coffee, tea, soda, etc.):
Depending on the amount of liquid, the length of time of the exposure, and storage conditions, dampstaining may or may not penetrate to the textblock. (It's also possible to have water damage to the textblock without concomitant damage to the book covering, especially if the book has been recased.)
Another frequently encountered type of accidental damage, almost always caused by rough handling and/or storage, is the ding:
If one's book is a paperback, one may encounter dog-earing, which is where the top or bottom cover of the paperback has been turned down (accidentally or otherwise). This problem, though, is more often associated with a book's pages:
A problem often associated with rough removal and replacement of a book on bookshelves is fraying, which occurs when the threads or fibers of a cloth cover are damaged by excessive rubbing against a harder material like wood:
All of these problems can be greatly diminished simply by exercising greater care when handling and storing the titles in one's private library....
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