False raised bands on Punjabi manuscripts

I was wondering if anyone had come across false raised bands in
Manuscripts and books from India, or from other countries employing
the Islamic link-stitch sewing style. I'd appreciate any thoughts on
the reasons for their occurrence, structural or fashion/influence
and ideas related to my MA research project. I will be investigating
the flexibility of the original materials in comparison to laminates
of other materials, which may be more flexible. This I hope will
suggest a conservation acceptable replacement to damaged, inflexible
original bands.

During a placement at the Wellcome Institute I worked on two Punjabi
manuscripts of which one had false raised bands of 4-mm thick
pasteboard. A further 12 manuscripts with false bands were shown to
me, each manuscript comes from the Punjab between the eighteenth and
nineteenth century, mostly written with the Gurmukhi script and
bound in an Islamic link-stitch sewing style.

The false raised bands are normally two in number between 2mm-4mm
thick and often around 2 centimetres wide. They are adhered over the
usual two sewing stations, generally underneath the spine linings
and not attached structurally to the binding or the covers.

The materials used vary from pasteboard, leather to cane, with
pasteboard being the most common. The choice of materials
contributed to restriction in the movement of the spine. Almost
holding the spine ridged this leads to predictable damage of the
book block and spine hinges in some of the manuscripts.

Neill McManus
MA Conservation student, Camberwell college of Arts.

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 12:20
                Distributed: Wednesday, August 26, 1998
                       Message Id: cdl-12-20-014
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