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Soldiers' stories and photos, encased and preserved
By Linda Wheeler Special to The Washington Post WASHINGTON - Pete Hakel is always on the hunt for memoirs written by Civil War soldiers. The local news cameraman also searches for photographs of the soldiers-turned-authors. He assembles a package and delivers it from his suburban home to a rural conservation business and hand bindery outside Winchester, Va., where he knows it will get proper care.
Cat Tail Run Hand Bookbinding specializes in old and fragile books and documents. In business since 1991, owners Jill and Bill Deiss have worked on John Wilkes Booth's diary, which is on display at Ford's Theatre, and handled the conservation of Abraham Lincoln's bank account records for Riggs Bank.
They also have conserved a 1611 first edition of the King James Bible and several pre-Civil War family Bibles. In some cases, they have to disassemble the Bible to restitch loose pages and repair or replace a leather cover.
Located between the hamlets of Cedar Grove and Green Springs, two miles from the West Virginia line, the bindery is in a gray, Hansel and Gretel-inspired building trimmed in burgundy, lighted through large windows all the way around and reached by a curving stone pathway. In the summer, the walk is lined with flowers.
The front door opens onto the main workshop, where a cat, Molly, is perched on a table in her curl-up box. There are cast-iron presses for flattening pages, long wooden tables for work space and a drawer of metal letters for hand setting type for book spines.
Among the employees is Dee Evetts, a former cabinetmaker whose specialty is constructing protective clamshell boxes that close tightly, one lip over the other. When finished, the box can be placed upright on a shelf. The bindery uses only pH-neutral materials.
Recently, he was working on a clamshell box that will protect a book Hakel found on the conduct of the Battle of Ball's Bluff in Loudoun County, Va., and photographs of Brig. Gen. Charles P. Stone, blamed for the Union disaster at that battle, and Col. Edward Baker, a U.S. senator who was killed there.
The 1880 book will nestle in the bottom of the burgundy-colored box with red leather and rounded spine, "not too loose as to wiggle and not too tight as to bind," Evetts said. He works to a 1/32-inch tolerance.
When the box is opened, there is the sound of textured fabric rubbing together.
The photographs will be displayed within a mat frame, protected by Mylar, and hinged as pages to the inside of the box. If there are a number of photos, they can be hinged to each other, accordion-style.
"The box becomes its own display," Jill Deiss said. "The material has a protective housing, but it can also be pulled off the shelf and opened for display."
The title Hakel selects will be hand stamped on the spine in 22-carat gold leaf, she said.
"We always use real gold because it won't oxidize and fade, as non-gold lettering will do," she said.
The bindery will charge Hakel about $400 for the work.
Hakel, who attends sales of vintage photos and books, has assembled 30 to 40 memoir collections and wonders what will happen to them when he dies. In one case, he contacted the great-grandnephew of a man whose book and picture he had collected and arranged for the collection to go to the family. He has been chasing these books and photos for 20 years.
"The hunt is worth more than anything," Hakel said. "First, I find the soldier who has written his own history, a memoir. Then the photos. I love putting the puzzle together."
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