Bibliophemera

I'm in Birmingham today for the Alabama IndyCar Grand Prix at the Barber Motorsports Park . This post is slightly modified from a piece I wrote two years ago and seemed worth repeating for today's event. I found this book shop label (also known as a ticket ) in a 1969 volume of Autocourse . The bookseller was Classic Motorbooks in Minneapolis. I thought about removing it, but I let it go. The book quickly sold and I regretted not saving the label. But I did take a picture of it before the book was shipped overseas. I was curious to see if the bookshop still existed; after all, it's been nearly 40 years since that label was affixed inside the rear cover. To my surprise, it does exist, albeit in a dramatically altered state from its humble beginnings in 1965 in a Minneapolis garage. Through expansion, publishing, name changes, and changes of ownership and business focus, Classic Motorbooks morphed into MBI Publishing and its three imprints: Motorbooks, Voyageur Press, and Zen...

You won't need a ticket to get into the American Bookbinders Museum Web site, but you will find plenty of tickets once you are there. A bookbinder's ticket is actually a small, printed label that advertises the bookbinder's business and craftsmanship in the work the reader is holding. The example above is from a Dutch collector who recently emailed me some scanned samples, which I featured in a recent post here . The bookbinder is identified by name and, most always, location, and there may be additional information about the business. This information may be presented with accompanying decorative graphics or in just a plain vanilla style. The label, or ticket (the two terms are often used interchangeably), is typically affixed to one of the endpapers. I tend to find more on the rear endpaper, but the front endpaper is certainly no stranger to these tiny collectibles. These are typically found in older books (say mid-twentieth century and earlier) when the practice of affi...