ephemera related to books their owners, sellers, publishers, printers, binders, etc.
Houston Book Fair at the Museum of Printing History
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Here's the most recent addition to my collection of bookish ephemera, an ad mailer for the 11th Annual Houston Book Fair at the Museum of Printing History, Saturday, November 9, 2013.
Cataloging books the other day, I came across an 1890s multivolume set called Messages and Papers of the Presidents . Inside one of the volumes was a slip of printed paper with a bookbinder's message: How to Open a Book . The set was published by the Government Printing Office, so they are the likely source of this piece of paper, which reprints a passage from a publication titled, Modern Bookbinding . No other bibliographical detail is included for that title, but I have found a magazine from that era, Modern Bookbinding and Their Designers . No clue, though, as to the author of this particular piece. You might wonder (I did) why there would be a need for instructions to open a book. And if you put those instructions inside the book, doesn't that defeat the purpose somewhat? Opening a book is not as easy as you might think. At least if you read these instructions and try to follow them. Here's the gist of it in the opening run-on sentence: Hold the book with its back on a ...
Here is my first Japanese bookstore trade label: The Kondo Book Store in the Ginza section of Tokyo. I found it in a copy of Homecoming , by Jiro Osaragi . It's been languishing for months in a backlog pile. I finally got around to looking at it and got a nice surprise in the form of some interesting history in U.S.-Japanese relations and psychological warfare following World War II. This English translation was a special reprint edition of Knopf's first English translation. Published by Charles E. Tuttle (Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo) in 1955, this edition was sold only in Japan, Korea, and Okinawa. Perhaps someday I'll have trade labels from the stores in Korea and Okinawa that also stocked this book. As the book deals with life in postwar (WWII) Japan, and the publication time frame includes post-Korean War, I can see how the book wound up on the shelves of Kondo Book Store and bookstores in Okinawa and Korea. U.S. occupation of Japan ended in 1952, so my guess is that th...
An elephant in a book shop? And of course it's reading a book. This image accompanies a fable by John Gay (1685-1732) for the book, Fables by the Late Mr. Gay, (London, Hitch, Hawk & Tonson). The 3.5 X 5.25-inch copperplate engraving was created for the publication by an artist known only as Wilson after the original illustration by William Kent. It depicts an Indian elephant and a bookseller in a well-appointed book shop. The elephant reads a book positioned on a lectern as the bookseller turns the pages. Below is the fable: The Elephant and the Bookseller Fable X The man who, with undaunted toils, Sails unknown seas to unknown soils, With various wonders feasts his sight: What stranger wonders does he write! We read, and in description view Creatures which Adam never knew: For, when we risk no contradiction, ...
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