Bibliophemera

I'm sad to hear of Bill Wittliff's passing yesterday, June 9, at age 79. He was a creative force in Texas as an author, screenwriter, photographer, publisher, bookseller, book collector, and designer of books and ephemera. Al Lowman, in Printing Arts in Texas (1975) ,  wrote, "Quite likely there is no more diversely creative talent in Texas today than this gifted designer, artist, sculptor, historian, writer, photographer, and poker player." I never really got to meet him other than exchanging greetings and thank yous at a book signing in Houston in 2007. I bought five copies of A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove , a collection of his photographs on the set of the Lonesome Dove miniseries in 1989. He was the screenwriter for that much beloved and now classic Western. He personalized a few copies for gifts, signed just his name on a few copies, which went up for sale later in my online shop, and, of course, I kept one copy he signed for my wife and me. It is...

I recently acquired a box of ephemera related to books and booksellers--mostly catalogs and mostly addressed to either Lucille Rasmussen, W.E.H. Rasmussen, or both. More on them in a moment. Apart from the bulk of nondescript, stapled sheets of cheap paper passing as catalogs of books for sale, are a handful of interesting pieces, such as this one from Kitemaug Press in Spartanburg, South Carolina--their Handlist of Miniature Books in Print . A folded 6 X 7-inch paper becomes a printed brochure or prospectus or bibliography. It's actually a bit of all three with a promotional card inside for their 1982 offering,  A Book of Many Things . The Kitemaug Press was started by Frank J. Anderson during his tenure as librarian at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where his papers are archived. As the biographical note from the preceding link states, Anderson developed an interest in printing, publishing, and miniature books while serving as librarian at Wofford C...

Today, Independence Day in America, I'm remembering the patriot printer, Isaiah Thomas. What follows is from a previous post about Thomas on this blog a few years ago. This portrait, by Ethan Allen Greenwood, was found at the Web site for  The American Antiquarian Society  along with the biography (copied at the end of this post) of the man who has been referred to as the "Father of Ephemera."  He was a patriot in the American Revolution, a publisher, a printer, and a bookseller. Early in the nineteenth century, he recognized the significance of printed ephemera in America's young history and the need to preserve it for the historical record of a growing nation. After his retirement from business, he pursued writing a history of printing in America and founded the American Antiquarian Society, for which he wrote the following justification: We cannot obtain a knowledge of those who are to come after us, nor are we certain what will be the events of future times;...

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...

Jean Frey, as best I can determine, was once a printer of books and art prints in Zurich, Switzerland about the early 1900s. Buch is book and kunstdruckerei broken apart into kunst and druckerie yields "art" and "print." The logo also helps with the translation, with its depiction of a printer at work with his printing press. The business survives today, albeit in a drastically altered and much larger form under a corporate umbrella. When I first spotted this ad cover, I knew it was European in origin. I've seen enough of these in the last few years to recognize certain design differences between American and European graphic design on antiquarian business correspondence items, including envelopes. I have a growing collection of European covers and, more often that not, the size of the European envelope, or cover, is recognizably larger than American covers. Beyond size, there are distinguishing graphic design characteristics, such as the use of lines and ty...

Happy Valentine's Day! Here's an appropriate item for the day--an ad cover acknowledging the occasion for 1900. Robert Bell's Sons, the Alexandria, Virginia printer, apparently printed a special batch of self-addressed envelopes, creating the above ad cover for their company and one of their non-printing products--the Falcon Stub (a style of nib for a fountain pen). The company seems to have enjoyed a long tenure in Alexandria. The earliest reference I can find is 1834 from a Web page on the Alexandria Library site featuring, appropriately enough, a Valentine card (below) from the company. They also offer this brief account of the company's history: Robert Bell's Sons is listed as a printer in the 1834 Occupational Directory and located on "Green near Royal." According to the 1860 Boyd's Washington and Georgetown Directory, Robert Bell's Sons moved to 110 South Fairfax Street. It stayed at that location another 87 years listing itself as a prin...