Turn over an old leaf: he runs the biggest book conservator in the nation. But for Don Etherington, it's not size but volumes that count.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: PICTURE THIS

In the beginning was the word. So begins the Gospel of John. And the word was but a sound until it was put upon a page. The apostle failed to mention that the Lord would send down mold, earwigs, floods and children with sticky fingers to plague the pages on which not only his word but those of man would be written. Their salvation became Don Etherington's calling.

The Greensboro company he runs specializes in rescuing and preserving rare books and other documents. One of only three or four such businesses in the country, Etherington Conservation Services is the largest. He began his training as a book conservator at age 13 in his native England--at 71, the accent is still intact--and, like Noah, he partly owes his fame to a flood.

After finishing his apprenticeship and further training in London, he was teaching his trade and restoring old music manuscripts for the British Broadcasting Corp. when, on Nov. 4, 1966, the rain-swollen Arno River spilled out of its banks and surged through Florence, Italy. Left in its wake were soaked, mud-caked artwork, manuscripts and books--some dating to the Middle Ages--including those in Biblioteca Nazionale, the national library.

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Etherington spent two years there, restoring books and earning an international reputation, then took jobs at the U.S. Library of Congress and the University of Texas. In 1987, Information Conservation Inc., a library bindery based in Greensboro, asked him to form a division to specialize in preservation and conservation of paper artifacts. The parent company--which has changed its name to ICIBinding Corp.-- moved its headquarters to Chesterfield, Ohio, in 1999. Etherington Conservation Services, which opened with a staff of three, now employs about 30. Here the password is passion. "If you have an interest in art, books, history, you cannot not love what we do," the founder says. "There's a creative aspect that keeps your juices flowing even if you're not creating the book itself."

The highest-profile current project is the North Carolina Museum of Art's four-volume edition of John James Audubon's The Birds of North America in what is called a double-elephant folio. It's more than 2 feet wide and a yard tall, with 435 illustrations. Christie's auctioned a similar set for $8.8 million in 2000. North Carolina bought its set in 1846, eight years after Audubon finished his 20-year project, and kept the volumes in use at the state library...