A Revelation, Not Restoration

I restore books-- mostly for my collection, so they're readable again; sometimes for a profit if someone brings me, say, her Bible she's used for 30 years and wants to continue using the beat-up thing. It's not hard, but the materials get expensive, and one must be very picky.

In this case, I was looking at an interesting book from 1830 that I picked up (see photo two: it's two volumes in one). I noticed, as I looked over the ugly, dull, faded yellowish cover that underneath was something more colorful.

Upon peeling back a badly damaged section of the fabric, I realised that the real cover was underneath it, and that the fabric was made into a permanent dust-jacket.

Upon looking at where the paper is glued onto the inside covers, I noticed that the extra blank sheets were missing, and I then realised that someone permanently attached the dust jacket to the book and glued those sheets down to hide it.

I decided to carefully undo that. The jacket was written on in a high-iron-content pen "34", which might be book 34 in the library or 1834-- possibly when the jacket was added on.
So, possibly, for 182 (if not 186) years the cover had not seen the light save for that seeping through an oppressive, dingy manila.

Carefully pulling out the fragile fabric from the deteriorating glue, I was successfully able to uncover a typical style of cover for books of the 1800s. My mom hates that style, but I love it.
The spine, too, was a nice sight as compared to the yellow fabric with '34' on it.

I determined that the dust jacket had been on there before the book began to get worn, because where mold began growing on the book, it lined up with the cover. Where someone spilled two drops of something on the cover, it lined up with the book. Where any wear was, it also existed on the book.

The book will need restoration work, and because I want to read this one it'll move to the top of the list for restoration (unless I can find the right leather/dyes for a 1820s illustrated Bible missing its cover). The first photo I took as I was still uncovering it, 186 years after that cover was made.

And thus was a revelation of a hidden thing, and not yet a restoration of a fascinating book in my collection.