Born-again Bibles: Book restorer finds recession-proof niche

PORT LUDLOW, Jefferson County — In a small, quiet workshop on three acres of rural land, bookbinder David Myhre carefully wraps an Ace bandage around an old, worn Bible.

The Bible is centuries old, its ornate leather cover rotted in places, its spine barely held together when it arrived at Myhre's doorstep.

Over several days, he has carefully scraped old glue off the underside of the old leather with a dull X-acto knife, pared sheets of new leather to replace the old, and glued the restored original spine cover on top.

"When you get injured, what do you do?" asks Myhre, who puts the bandage on to make sure pressure is evenly distributed as the new glue dries. "You put an Ace bandage on it. Well, this book is sort of injured. It needs a new spine."

In this painstaking, meticulous way, Myhre, 61, is giving new lives to old Bibles that often have great personal meaning for their owners.

Myhre binds and restores all sorts of publications — from books to newspapers to legal documents — at his one-man shop, Duckabush Book Bindery. But in recent years, he's created a niche restoring old Bibles — about 150 of them last year.

For Myhre, it's been a spot of economic brightness in a trade that's seen demand plummet as books and other publications increasingly go digital.

Though, by many accounts, the market is small, "People still want to preserve old family Bibles or Bibles they were given," said David Bundy, associate provost for library services at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Apprenticeship

At the workshop next to his home, Bibles and books to be restored are stacked on tables. Sheets of decorative paper and thin leather line pullout shelves, and large pieces of machinery — some manufactured between the Civil War and World War I — stand tall.

Despite his passion for the craft, Myhre didn't set out to get into the book — or Bible — restoration business.

He didn't even particularly like to read as a kid. But shop classes? Those he liked.

After graduating from high school, he drew a number in the draft lottery that meant he had a high chance of getting sent to Vietnam. But he found out that if he were a trade apprentice in a union shop, he could get a deferment.

He got into an apprenticeship program at a trade bindery and eventually launched his own business, binding everything from issues of Seattle Weekly to legal documents, cookbooks and self-published books.

Business was good enough to support a growing family: his wife, Jani Myhre, and their three kids.

But in the past decade, as publications became increasingly digitized, and then the economy tanked, business dropped.

One area that didn't: Bible restoration.

He started slowly, restoring just one or two a month over the years. But as people heard about his work, the niche started to grow and he took more classes on restoring old books.

It's unknown how many Bible restorers there are in the country. Most larger book binderies have a team that restores old books.

And, "There are little one-person shops that do that all over the place," said Mark Melahn, general manager of The HF Group-Washington, which Melahn said is the largest book bindery in the state. "But it's not nearly what it used to be."

All sizes and ages

For Myhre, business ebbs and flows. He might get one Bible one month, 20 the next.

Most come from Western Washington; some from other states.

Sometimes they are smaller, take-to-church-size Bibles. Often, he gets bigger ones — each larger than a couple of Yellow Pages stacked together.

The big ones are often family Bibles that date back centuries.

They became especially popular in the 19th century, possibly because technological advances made Bibles easier to print and railroads made distribution — previously done on horse-drawn carts or in boats — easier, said Paul Gutjahr, associate professor of English at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Displaying the big Bibles in one's home also became "a totem of refinement" among middle-class families, Gutjahr said.

Aside from a few limited editions, the big ones don't often have a high resale value. But they do have sentimental value.

Typically, they have a section of family-history pages placed in them, where family members record births, weddings and deaths.

People will "show me where their great-great-grandfather signed it," Myhre says. "Or sometimes someone will buy a Bible at a used-book store and want me to remove the old records pages and put in new blank ones for their family."

Myhre restored several Bibles for a Silverdale couple: the Rev. Norman Nideng, 89, a retired Baptist pastor, and his wife, Eleanor Fischer Nideng, 80, a retired director of purchasing at a college.

Among Eleanor's most treasured restored Bibles: a New King James version that played a special role in the couple's romance.

Norman had known Eleanor's first husband decades ago in seminary. They met again after both their first spouses died. Their friendship grew by email.

Then, one Christmas, Norman gave her that Bible.

"It has special meaning to me because it was the first gift that Norm gave me," Eleanor said.

Over the years, she used it so much — nearly every day — that it began to fall apart.

Myhre resewed the loose pages, replaced the leather cover and put in two ribbon markers, allowing Eleanor to once again read passages from it every morning, refer to it during Bible study on Wednesdays and again at church on Sundays.

"A few simple rules"

It takes from a few hours to several weeks, and from $100 to $500 or so, for Myhre to restore an old Bible.

The work might include anything from a simple leather reconditioning to more extensive cover, binding and spine repairs, or a complete resewing of the binding.

"Clients tell me what they want," he says. "I tell them what the books need."

To him, each hard-bound book he works on is not just a vehicle for information. "It has a little soul," he says.

But a paperback? "It's not a book," he says. "It's a scratch pad."

And don't get him started on Kindles and their ilk. "That's a four-letter word in my shop."

While not a religious man — "I like to live my life by a few simple rules," he said, "don't be judgmental and be nice" — he was aghast when someone brought in an old Bible with sections cut from it that the previous owner had apparently sold.

"Slicing into an old book like that just isn't right," says Myhre, shaking his head. "It's sacrilegious. I guess for a Bible, it really is a sacrilege."

Rob VandeWeghe, who runs Windmill Ministries in Quilcene, Jefferson County, buys and sells antique, illustrated Bibles, turning to Myhre to restore those in disrepair.

"Many people, when they fix up these things, they fix up some substance on the outside that makes it look like it's fixed," he said. "But if you open up the Bible 30, 40 times, it's broken up."

Myhre, though, does excellent work, VandeWeghe says, allowing him to see in the restored Bibles why he fell in love with them in the first place.

"There's so much art in there, and reverence," VandeWeghe said. "It's pretty amazing. It's a real respect to God."

Janet I. Tu: 206-464-2272 or jtu@seattletimes.com