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Karen Tolley sits in her bookstore, Lost & Bound Books, in Roseburg on Friday. Tolley stocks rare and hard-to-find books in her store, and also repairs distressed books.
Tattered and worn books of importance need not wither on the shelf — Karen Tolley has got them covered.
The owner of Lost & Bound Books on Harvard Avenue in Roseburg has been stitching together spines and tightening the hinges of children’s classics and the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John for more than a year now.
Tolley said a sign on the door of her business, located next door to While Away Books, ought to read: “I’m the slowest book repairer in Douglas County, but I’m also the best.”
All kidding aside, she’s also the only one. And it’s fitting for Tolley. Binding herself within the world of book repair, antiquities, and rare and hard-to-find books was a natural career path for the founder of While Away Books.
“It’s a reviving art,” Tolley said.
Many of the books Tolley repairs are Bibles, often the most-treasured book in a family and one that has been passed down through generations. She said she usually brings them back to life with new thread, and fortifies brittle pages with a thin, clear layer of Japanese paper, highly regarded for its long fibers.
It took many years for Tolley to enter the book-repair business. Her interest was first piqued at the age of 9, when a man in Santa Rosa, Calif., nine miles from the apple farm she grew up on, fixed one of her favorites. It continued to hold a fascination for her. So, decades later, ready to be surrounded by books and friends again, she attended book-restoration classes at the San Francisco Center for the Book.
“This seems like a good thing to do,” said Tolley, a Douglas County resident since 1975.
Her first dream, however, was owning a used bookstore. Through donations from family and friends, Tolley opened While Away Books in 1994 with a friend and 10,000 books on the shelves.
By the time she sold the store in 2003 to care for her ill father, there were 65,000 books on the shelves.
When her father passed away in 2005, she focused squarely on opening her next venture near a familiar store.
“I knew exactly where I wanted it to be,” Tolley said. “I felt like I had left all of my friends.”
In the neighborhood, she’s known as “The Founder.” And each day The Founder gets her free cup of coffee at While Away Books.
“That’s just kind of the deal,” said Peggy Cheatham, who worked for Tolley for three-and-a-half years before buying the used bookstore.
The book repair business was sparsely populated when Tolley opened While Away Books. In 1994, she said there was one book repairer in Eugene and one in Ashland.
Now Eugene has two and Ashland has three.
In Tolley’s time in the book repair business, she has received some curious demands. Like the couple who asked her to put a “Joy of Cooking” book back together after it had been left on the roof of a car and fell on a highway, getting run over many times and losing pages.
Tolley suggested the couple buy another copy of the book, rather than spending $50 for repairs.
The couple scoffed.
“This is part of our family history,” they cried.
Tolley said she can repair about 10 books a week, but it depends on their condition: “Each book kind of tells you what it needs.”
In the case of a leather cover coming off a book, Tolley said she carefully lifts the edges of the embossment to slip matching leather underneath and stitch it together.
On the shelves of her store, which is about an eighth the size of While Away Books, Tolley has books for sale that were written by early Oregon settlers and some early editions of classic literature.
Tolley has also ventured into publishing. Last August, she and Stanley Hays of Myrtle Creek published “Recollections of Life in the Little Snake River Valley Wyoming.”
From the day Tolley opened Lost & Bound Books, customers began arriving with books in need of repair.
“It’s fun to bring life back to a book again,” she said. “It’s magic what can be done.”
• You can reach reporter Adam Pearson at 957-4213 or by e-mail at apearson@newsreview.info.
The owner of Lost & Bound Books on Harvard Avenue in Roseburg has been stitching together spines and tightening the hinges of children’s classics and the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John for more than a year now.
Tolley said a sign on the door of her business, located next door to While Away Books, ought to read: “I’m the slowest book repairer in Douglas County, but I’m also the best.”
All kidding aside, she’s also the only one. And it’s fitting for Tolley. Binding herself within the world of book repair, antiquities, and rare and hard-to-find books was a natural career path for the founder of While Away Books.
“It’s a reviving art,” Tolley said.
Many of the books Tolley repairs are Bibles, often the most-treasured book in a family and one that has been passed down through generations. She said she usually brings them back to life with new thread, and fortifies brittle pages with a thin, clear layer of Japanese paper, highly regarded for its long fibers.
It took many years for Tolley to enter the book-repair business. Her interest was first piqued at the age of 9, when a man in Santa Rosa, Calif., nine miles from the apple farm she grew up on, fixed one of her favorites. It continued to hold a fascination for her. So, decades later, ready to be surrounded by books and friends again, she attended book-restoration classes at the San Francisco Center for the Book.
“This seems like a good thing to do,” said Tolley, a Douglas County resident since 1975.
Her first dream, however, was owning a used bookstore. Through donations from family and friends, Tolley opened While Away Books in 1994 with a friend and 10,000 books on the shelves.
By the time she sold the store in 2003 to care for her ill father, there were 65,000 books on the shelves.
When her father passed away in 2005, she focused squarely on opening her next venture near a familiar store.
“I knew exactly where I wanted it to be,” Tolley said. “I felt like I had left all of my friends.”
In the neighborhood, she’s known as “The Founder.” And each day The Founder gets her free cup of coffee at While Away Books.
“That’s just kind of the deal,” said Peggy Cheatham, who worked for Tolley for three-and-a-half years before buying the used bookstore.
The book repair business was sparsely populated when Tolley opened While Away Books. In 1994, she said there was one book repairer in Eugene and one in Ashland.
Now Eugene has two and Ashland has three.
In Tolley’s time in the book repair business, she has received some curious demands. Like the couple who asked her to put a “Joy of Cooking” book back together after it had been left on the roof of a car and fell on a highway, getting run over many times and losing pages.
Tolley suggested the couple buy another copy of the book, rather than spending $50 for repairs.
The couple scoffed.
“This is part of our family history,” they cried.
Tolley said she can repair about 10 books a week, but it depends on their condition: “Each book kind of tells you what it needs.”
In the case of a leather cover coming off a book, Tolley said she carefully lifts the edges of the embossment to slip matching leather underneath and stitch it together.
On the shelves of her store, which is about an eighth the size of While Away Books, Tolley has books for sale that were written by early Oregon settlers and some early editions of classic literature.
Tolley has also ventured into publishing. Last August, she and Stanley Hays of Myrtle Creek published “Recollections of Life in the Little Snake River Valley Wyoming.”
From the day Tolley opened Lost & Bound Books, customers began arriving with books in need of repair.
“It’s fun to bring life back to a book again,” she said. “It’s magic what can be done.”
• You can reach reporter Adam Pearson at 957-4213 or by e-mail at apearson@newsreview.info.
