Washing paper and restoring books with Aurelia Sedlmair

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.com/podcast/washing-paper-and-restoring-books-with-aurelia-sedlmair/

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Aurelia Sedlmair is a historical fencer, a translator, a transcriber, and is now studying the conservation of paper and books. Her Instagram is @freiraum.buch

In our conversation we talk about what brought Aurelia to the Isle of Man, a small, independent island off the coast of England, and her study at West Dean College of Art and Conservation. 

We talk about what happens when you get a book restored, and Guy recommends the bookbinder in Colchester who restored his copy of Alfred Hutton’s The Sword and the Centuries. (Colin Brown, at Cuckoo Farm Studios. bindingarrangement.co.uk). The aim is not to modernise the book, but instead to make it look as if nothing has been done to it. No modernisation.

Aurelia describes how to repair paper and how to clean it. Amazingly, if dry cleaning doesn’t work you can just wash it, and she explains how it’s done.

Click here for some before and after images of books and paper that Aurelia has worked on:

https://swordschool.com/podcast/washing-paper-and-restoring-books-with-aurelia-sedlmair/

Of course, this wouldn’t be the Sword Guy Podcast without talking about swords. Aurelia is a rapier and smallsword fencer, though there’s not much of it happening on the Isle of Man. We talk about the brilliance of smallsword and also about how to encourage beginners to give historical martial arts a try.