Old German Tambour repair

A friend has an old European tambour 'chest' as she describes it - I haven't seen it yet. The slats of the tambour have separated, and when she looked at it with a view to repairing it, the tambour appears to be backed by 1920 German newspaper. Have you ever come across this before? Do you know if it was common to put newspaper as backing on fabric, or did they use newspaper instead of fabric? Is there a method for salvaging the newspaper and re-using it?

I won't be seeing it until next week, will post pics then.

Not an answer to AlexS enquiry, but a closely related question.

Daughter and I, (mostly daughter's elbow grease) are restoring her grandfather's roll top desk. All in oak, and probably one of those factory produced North American items from the 1920's that you see in old catalogues.

Restoration of the main carcase is no problem. Methylated spirits is removing the old varnish which I take to be a shellac type and the oak grain is looking wonderful where it has been completed.

The problem now arises, how do we attack the roll top tambour. The backing appears to be a light canvas, but we have only been able to view it with a mirror. My guess is that the slats are glued to the canvas using a hide based glue, as used in those times. If we apply meths will we damage or dissolve the old glue? I'm a bit reluctant to remove the tambour from the carcase.

Thanks in anticipation of responses.

Hope Alex doesn't mind this addition to his post.

ROB NZ