Bibliophemera

Last year, I posted to this blog about a book-related piece of ephemera with a very weak link, if you could even call it that, to the Thanksgiving holiday we celebrate today in America. It was a blotter for the Pilgrim Bookshop in Brooklyn, NY . Pilgrim was as close as I could get to Thanksgiving. Told you it was weak. I also lamented that the bookshop wasn't in Plymouth, Massachusetts, for at least then it would have some connection to the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving celebration . This year, I have a better connection--a postcard from the Guides Pilgrim Bookstore. I knew there had to be a bookstore in Plymouth with the Pilgrim name at some point in history. It's just too obvious a choice. The bookstore was run by publisher and bookseller, A.S. Burbank (1856-1946), and was known for its pilgrim and Plymouth souvenirs.  This postcard was made in Germany and distributed by A.C. Bosselman & Co. in New York. It is likely a Plymouth/Pilgrim souvenir postca...

Los Angeles bookseller, Ernest Dawson , wrote an article in 1947 for The Quarterly for the Historical Society of Southern California-- Los Angeles Booksellers of 1897 (Volume XXIX, No. 2, June 1947). That article was reprinted that same year in the 12-page booklet below, by Saunders Press in Claremont, California. The Saunders Press, by the way, was operated by Ruth Thomson and husband Lynne Saunders. Getting a bit off topic, researching Saunders led to this interesting article on the history of women in printing . Ruth Thomson Saunders also designed bookplates, some of which are featured in Knox College's The Art of The Book exhibit . Back to the Los Angeles booksellers... In 1947, the author, proprietor of Dawson's Book Shop in Los Angeles, took a look back at the bookselling scene in Los Angeles as it existed when he first arrived in that city in 1897. He states in the opening paragraphs that Los Angeles had at that time "three good new bookstores ...

Here's a letterpress print announcement from Herbert Fahey for the Roxburghe Club in San Francisco in 1947. The announcement, with an attractive border of antiquarian images of printing-related scenes, is for a presentation by Felix Cunha titled, Incunabula Medica . Cunha is described as a "Doctor of Medicine, Bibliophile, Author, Savant, Traveler." The printer Fahey, whose name appears on the back, was active in the book arts in California, having served as president of the  San Francisco Club of Printing House Craftsmen   in 1929. The Book Club of California also published his book,  Early Printing in California: From Its Beginning in the Mexican Territory to Statehood, September 9, 1850 (1956, printed by the Grabhorn Press).   I would assume he might have also been a member of the Roxburghe Club, which was formed in 1928 in San Francisco. What I know about Felix Cunha is pretty much what is printed on the announcement about him. A...