Book Safe

Shhh.... It's a secret.

The Challenge: July: Unexpected (Book with hidden compartment)
Material: Wood pulp paper, leather, thread, water paint
Pattern: None, traditional bookbinding methods
Year: 1750s to 1850s
Notions: None
How historically accurate is it? The construction methods are accurate. For the 18th century, linen paper would have been used.  The text is from 1775
Hours to complete: 5 to 6
First worn: August 9, 2019.
Total cost: About $5.

For the July Historical Sew Monthly challenge, I've likely stretched the guidelines a bit.  The challenge was to create a historical piece of clothing or accessory with a hidden or unexpected feature.  The first thing that popped to mind was a book to hide my phone in at events.  There *was* sewing involved, and if carried, I'm counting it as an accessory.

Doing a bit of Google research, it appears that "book safes" or hollowed-out books have been around just about as long as books have.  I tried to narrow it down specifically to 18th century books, and found a couple of images online of 18th century books that had been hollowed out in the 19th century (similar to someone now, hollowing out an old book they found at a tag sale).

18th Century Book Safe from Heritage Auctions.

I've dabbled with book binding before, so I decided to print out a text from my preferred time period, bind it, and use it for the challenge.  Since I was hiding a phone/camera, I chose "A Treatise of Optics" by Joseph Harris, originally printed in 1775.  I thought the optics/camera bit was a fun little inside joke.  I actually left the full text intact, then added misprints and blank pages for my hollowed section.  This way, I can actually read the book at events, but still have space to hide items.  This was my first successful attempt at a quarter-binding with leather, but it didn't turn out as I would have liked.  My experiments with marbled paper (more appropriate for my time period) were a complete failure, so I went with coloring the covers with water paint instead.

Process photos below:
 

Text downloaded from Google Books, Printed into signatures using Adobe Acrobat.

Signatures numbered, or "signed," to help keep them in order before sewing.

Signatures blocked up in a vise.
Shallow saw cuts allow for stitching to pass through the
signatures without the need to puncture each signature individually.

The last signature added to my cobbled together sewing frame.
The book is worked from back to front.

Each signature is sewn to bands along the back, using a kettle stitch to lock them in place.

The text block, sewn and removed from the frame.

Functionally, it's a book, but now it needs covers.

A linen "mull" is glued to the back. This helps bind the signatures and bands.

Pasteboard covers are added, and the mull glued down to them.

A leather spine is glued to the back, and pressed over the back
cords to create the distinctive look seen on 18th century books.

Paper is added to the covers, and the leather is glued down to create a quarter binding.
I forgot to capture photos of the process, but this should have been
marbled paper to be historically correct.

The "hidden" compartment was cut out with a sharp knife.
Some people glue the pages together, but I left them as is.

Hidden in plain site among my other books.
I don't have the tools to add gilding, but usually a
title and decorations would have been embossed on the spine.

A fun project, which may prove useful at events.  That, however, is still to be determined.