That moment a customer asked me to 'fix the smell' of their antique book

So this lady walks into my little bindery shop last Tuesday, holding this 1920s poetry book all wrapped in a towel. She hands it over and says 'it smells like my late uncle's attic, can you fix it?' I open it up and whoa, it hits me like a wall of old mothballs and musty paper. I had to explain that you can't just spray Febreze on a 100 year old cloth binding (though I bet she wanted me to). I spent about 45 minutes airing it out on my rack with a fan, then gently brushed the pages with a soft brush. She picked it up two days later and said it smelled 'acceptable' which I guess is a win. Has anyone else gotten weird requests like that, or is it just my corner of the trade?

3 comments

3 Comments

michaeltorres16d ago

Double check those endpapers like the_mary said, because that musty mothball combo usually means the paper is already starting to break down. I'd bet there's some foxing or at least a tide mark in the gutter, especially if it sat in an attic through a couple of wet seasons. Did you mention what the cloth binding looked like under the towel, or did you just focus on the smell? I've seen that exact scent profile before and it was always hiding red rot on the spine.

the_mary16d ago

Did she say anything about where the book was stored before her uncle passed? I'm asking cause that smell you described sounds like it came from somewhere with really bad humidity or maybe even a basement flood at some point. Mothballs plus musty paper usually means it was in a damp spot for years and someone tried to cover it up with those balls. You handled it way better than I would have, I probably would've just told her to leave it in a bag of baking soda for a week and hope for the best. Did you check for any mold or water damage on the endpapers while you had it open? That's the real issue with old books that smell funky, the smell is just a symptom of something worse going on.

nancyn6916d ago

Three years ago I had a guy bring in a 1950s cookbook that smelled like straight up fish oil and old bacon grease, and he asked if I could "just Febreze the pages" too. I had to explain that Febreze would pretty much wreck the paper fibers and probably make it smell like weird floral fish forever. I ended up putting it in a sealed box with baking soda for two weeks and gently vacuuming the crumbs out of the spine, and when he came back he said it "mostly just smells like paper now." I guess that's the best compliment we get in this business, "acceptable" and "mostly just paper.