—As told to Amy S. Choi

Richard C. Baker

"I was an art history student in the 1970s, but I didn't want to be an academic. I stumbled on book conservation, and I realized I'm always happiest as a craftsman, at the bench. It's a pleasure to handle original documents. Occasionally I get to work on very early books. I've restored books printed in Venice in 1480, some of the first books ever published. There's always some detective work that goes into conserving a piece. Once I had someone bring me a letter signed by George Washington. The director of the local historical society had said it was probably not real. But I put it on my light table, and by George, it had George Washington's personal watermark on the stationery. It ended up being worth about $50,000."

WHO: Richard Baker
WHAT: A book and documents conservator
WHERE: St. Louis
EMPLOYEES: 2
REVENUES: $130,000
HOW HE DID IT: Baker started as a hobbyist. Eventually he did work for
institutions such as Chicago's Newberry Library and the Smithsonian. In
1989, when he was chief conservator at the American Antiquarian Society,
his wife became dean of libraries at Washington University. Baker
started his own shop, introducing himself to all the library directors
in town. "They were happy to talk to me because of my wife," he says.
SIGNATURE WORK: In October, Baker was working on a document signed by
Abraham Lincoln that declared that Confederate prisoners could take an
oath of the Union and be freed. At the same time, he was restoring a
letter from Robert E. Lee, written while he served in the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers.
FAMILY VALUES: About half of Baker's clients are institutions, while the
others are collectors and individuals with family heirlooms. "We do a
lot of 100-year-old family bibles, which have the genealogy written into
the family history pages," he says. "A lot of sentimental value there."