Bibliophemera

Buckley & Curtin were printers and bookbinders in San Francisco around the turn of the last century. Other than their billhead above, I can find barely a trace that they existed. So this post is about to veer off on a tangent into unbookish waters because there's enough on the name associated with the order to keep this post going. From Buckley & Curtin's billhead slogan, I assume that printing was their mainstay, more so than bookbinding, and they aimed to please with perfection: " Perfect Printing Pleases ." I hope for their sake that their customer was perfectly pleased with the order. But then the total cost for all that was only $15. The Board of Education (San Francisco I presume) ordered 8,000 admittance cards for Madame Schumann-Heink back in December of 1913. Had the Board not liked the final product, they would have had 8,000 reasons to be angry with Buckley & Curtin. Sounds like a lot of cards and a lot of admittance to something. But admittan...

Austin G. Putnam was a bookseller, stationer, and bookbinder, as well as a manufacturer of blank books, according to this 1858 billhead. He practiced his trade at 456 Washington (corner of Essex), in Boston. I had hoped to make a connection to the G.P. Putnam & Sons publishing family that got started in New York in 1838 as a bookselling concern, but no luck yet. There may not be any connection, or it may be very distant. So far as I know, there are no close ties between the two Putnams. As for Austin G. Putnam, he's proving to be an elusive historical figure, but a snapshot of his business history is contained in this billhead from February 16, 1858. On this day, he completed his transaction with Mr. Gilmore for binding what looks like a 12-volume set of a story book. I can't make out the first word in the title. It looks like he charged $4.00 for that good bit of work. Twelve volumes had to have taken some time. What I did find was a symbol of significant American history...