Przyczynek do badań nad historią konserwacji papieru

The two examples of conservation of the sixteenth- century books printed tin Cracow's old printing works notorious of the high quality of their products have been presented by the author. The first of books, widely known as the so-called Leopolite’s Bible printed at the Szarffenbergers and constituting one of the most outstanding monuments of ancient printing art in Cracow was, in 1883, subjected to restoration by Władysław Wenda then an employee of the Old Records Archive, Warsaw who concentrated his efforts on reconstruction of the missing text parts and on restoration of the partly damaged woodcut illustrations. His work can be regarded as one of the most typical for the nineteenth-century approaches in restoring of old books. Though lacking suitable experience, which the lack found its reflection in quality of conservation carried out, Wenda — it should be emphasized — tried to restore its original forms to the defective copy. So, for instance, the missing frontispiece was replaced by him with a copy prepared by the use of homeographic technique invented in 1857 by Adam Piliński. Also the facsimile reproductions of the four text pages have been added by him. It deservaes to be stressed that Wenda being fully conscious of importance which his description of treatments carried out might have for the future researchers had bound it together with the original text. Hence, the above description can be treated ias one of the first conservator’s documentations.