The above is the label after being removed from the back of the 1834 Martin. We had to remove the label in order to do any kind of restorative work on the guitar. If we hadn't removed the label then it would have been destroyed in the restoration process.

We carefully (really carefully) steamed off the label and used an x-acto knife to gently get under it and lift it off.

The label itself is going to need to be restored, because if we glue it back into the guitar it will eventually just disintegrate. It is an extremely fragile piece of paper. I'm going to scan it in to my Mac at a very high resolution, and restore the label in PhotoShop® pixel by pixel! I'll then save it and have it printed out on rice paper. The original label can then be sealed back up inside of its plastic bag, where it has lived since I took it off over a year ago.