Old postcard album

[Top-of-the-hill]

  I may be asking the impossible, but this is my problem. I have two Edwardian postcard albums which belonged to my great aunt. One in particular is now very fragile, and I am considering what to do about it. The rather Art Nouveau cover is probably salvageable, but the pages are a sort of sugar paper with slots for the cards and are fragile and coming out of the cover. I would prefer not to use the modern type of postcard album.
   Does anyone know whether there is a supplier of the old style pages?

[Mowsehowse]

I don't, sorry.... BUT....
Would it be a workable idea to buy a child's new scrap book, and cut it to match the original album pages with a craft knife?
I am sure I have seen them in Poundland and such.

[Top-of-the-hill]

  That is an idea - scrapbooks have very similar paper.

[ThrelfallYorky]

If you are deft and careful it may be possible to take your album apart, (I've heard this called "deconstructing")and to mount each sheet onto another heavy paper or thin card, before re-assembling the whole. Careful choice of adhesive is important.
(You could do the same for the cover sheets, and then put the whole thing within a loose-leaf folder if you didn't fancy trying to reconstruct the book format)

[Whipby]

Have to admit that my first thought was to apply to go on The Repair Shop!

More realistically, have you tried searching for a book restorer near you?

[Spidermonkey]

I'm sure there was an episode of The Repair Shop that showed something like this.

https://youtu.be/7LyazdsNOOE

[Top-of-the-hill]

  Thank you for that clip - it was a very similar album, and the woman who owned it was quite right - you can hear the senders talking. I wonder what they came up with? The owner said something about wanting to see the backs of the cards, which is true, but would be hard to achieve without going to plastic pockets. I suspect a book binder would be too expensive for me.
   I did try to get in touch with the Repair Shop a couple of years ago, filled in their long on-line form, and had absolutely no response, not even an automated reply. It rather put me off them!

[Treetotal]

You may like to look for a similar album on eBay, And use the pages as replacements for your damaged ones.
Carol

[artifis]

In the repair shop the guy rebuilding the album created cut out 'windows's in the mounting pages that corresponded with the backs of the cards so that the owner could read the contents of the cards by simply turning the mounting pages over - he obviously made the cut outs slightly smaller than the cards so that the cards were still retained.  I would suggest using clear, self adhesive corner mountings to hold the cards rather than cutting slots in the mounting pages as these will always deteriorate - look for acid free versions to negate any possibility of long term damage to the cards. 

The guy doing the repair would have finished up with an album twice as thick as the original by mounting cards on one side of the pages only whereas the original album had cards mounted on both sides of the pages so he made another album in the style of the preserved/rebuilt original.

I would also recommend scanning each card, front and back, and keeping these on a back up device of some sort, usb sticks are ideal.  This has the advantage of preserving the collection should anything happen to the album - I learnt the hard way as I somehow lost some of the cards and photos my mother had collected/taken when I had to clear out my father's house after he had died; great shame as they were of significance to her family ancestry/history and therefore to mine.