WANTED! INTERNSHIPS FOR THREE STUDENTS FROM RUSSIA AND SCOTLAND!
A global "ILAB School" without borders: The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers offers internships to students and beginners in the rare book trade who wish to widen their knowledge through practical learning and to plug into the worldwide network of antiquarian bookselling.
A POST RARE BOOK SCHOOL REPORT FROM TAVISTOCK BOOKS SCHOLARSHIP WINNER TRAVIS LOW
This year Tavistock Books (Almeda, United States) offered a scholarship to Joel Silver's excellent course "Reference Sources for Researching Rare Books" at Rare Book School (RBS). A worthy winner was found in Travis Low of Ken Sanders Rare Books. Travis started out as a shipping clerk and has taken advantage of numerous opportunities to expand his role. His new responsibilities often include researching new inventory, making this RBS course ideal.
Travis checked in with Vic Zoschak of Tavistock Books to share his RBS experience.
RARE BOOKSELLERS' FIRSTS - THE COVER STORY CONTINUES
Booksellers' first catalogues are as rare as some rare books. Often printed and produced with much love and energy, yet on cheap paper and for a still small company of customers, they are "used" - and thrown away.
Who started when? What did he or she offer? And for what price? How did he or she present the material? With illustrations, elaborate descriptions, old-fashioned, modern, sophisticated or funny? The catalogues, and especially their covers, reflect the taste and customs of the decades in which they were printed.
THE ART OF COLLECTING - AN INTERVIEW WITH RARE BOOK DEALER AND AUTHOR DAVID MASON
David Mason discovered his love of literature in a bathtub at age eleven, at fifteen he was expelled from school. For the next decade and a half, he worked odd jobs, bought books more often than food, and floated around Europe. He helped gild a volume in white morocco for Pope John XXIII. And then, at the age of 30, after returning home to Canada and apprenticing with Joseph Patrick Books, he found his calling.
ANTIQUARIAN BOOKSELLERS IN EXILE - ABRAHAM HORODISCH (1898-1987)
Hundreds of rare book dealers - among them the most famous of the trade - were murdered by the Nazis. Those who survived were forced to close their companies and to hand them over to the Nazis. Only if they left behind their whole existence was it possible for them to leave Nazi Germany and to escape to other countries all over the world.
Ernst Fischer's biographical handbook "Verleger, Buchhändler & Antiquare aus Deutschland und Österreich in der Emigration nach 1933" tells the stories of antiquarian booksellers in exile like Susanne Bach, Bernard M. Rosenthal, Walter Schatzki, Karl Anton Steiner, William Salloch, Lucien Goldschmidt, Bernard Amtmann, and many others. Some of the most impressive stories will be published on the ILAB website.
"That godly search engine and its equally marvelous repository of information, Wikipedia, have become so pervasive in our lives it's hard to remember what the world was like without them. But if I think about it really hard (this is precisely the sort of answer I cannot Google), long shelves of encyclopedias come to mind. The Americana and the Colliers sets of my youth were sources of lots of cool info, like how to make gunpowder, but they were woefully short on facts about girls and sex."
"Several years ago I had a customer who occasionally bought an expensive book. He was not a regular, but sometimes came by to buy something, I think to reward himself for business deals that had gone well. He drove a flashy car, a Porsche that he was very proud of. He usually sprang out of it, wearing an Armani suit, an open white shirt and a gold chain around his fleshy, tanned neck. One day he arrived unannounced - looking distraught."
"Something dreadful and disappointing has happened to me", he moaned. "I need something to take my mind off it."
"It's a thrilling experience, a rite of passage into the trade. A member of the public thinks so highly of your skills as a book maven, (or your status as a cash cow), that they invite you into their private space to examine, and make an offer on, their books. You get to walk around pronouncing on the current state of the market, on what's hot and what's not, all the while maintaining an ingratiating stream of patter that, you hope, will convince the owner that you're a sage and trustworthy expert."
COLLECTING III - PALAU ISLANDS, PACIFIC OCEAN, AND BOCHUM, GERMANY
"Had he ever been there? Perhaps he'd been a seaman earlier in his life? No, he said, the farthest they'd ever been from home was Basle in Switzerland. "I've been a postman all my life, he said, and we never had much money to spare. What Mother saved up I spent on books."
Buying collections is always an exiting business. There are so many elements of surprise, even if you have an idea what is in the collection, because you helped build it.
During the 41st ILAB Congress, preceded by ILAB's International Antiquarian Book Fair, both in Paris in April 2014, the 16th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography will be awarded. The prestigious international Prize of 10.000 USD for a scholarly work in the field of bibliography is handed out every four years.
"The list of submitted books about books is, just as last time, of high quality and full of new and interesting bibliographies on a wide range of subjects", says Prize Secretary Arnoud Gerits. "Many of them are not only of excellent quality, but also show the continued commitment of scholars, collectors, dealers and professional
bibliographers to this important and interesting part of the daily life of everyone who is seriously concerned with the history of the printed book."
A global "ILAB School" without borders: The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers offers internships to students and beginners in the rare book trade who wish to widen their knowledge through practical learning and to plug into the worldwide network of antiquarian bookselling.
This year Tavistock Books (Almeda, United States) offered a scholarship to Joel Silver's excellent course "Reference Sources for Researching Rare Books" at 
Booksellers' first catalogues are as rare as some rare books. Often printed and produced with much love and energy, yet on cheap paper and for a still small company of customers, they are "used" - and thrown away.
David Mason discovered his love of literature in a bathtub at age eleven, at fifteen he was expelled from school. For the next decade and a half, he worked odd jobs, bought books more often than food, and floated around Europe. He helped gild a volume in white morocco for Pope John XXIII. And then, at the age of 30, after returning home to Canada and apprenticing with Joseph Patrick Books, he found his calling.
Hundreds of rare book dealers - among them the most famous of the trade - were murdered by the Nazis. Those who survived were forced to close their companies and to hand them over to the Nazis. Only if they left behind their whole existence was it possible for them to leave Nazi Germany and to escape to other countries all over the world.
"That godly search engine and its equally marvelous repository of information, Wikipedia, have become so pervasive in our lives it's hard to remember what the world was like without them. But if I think about it really hard (this is precisely the sort of answer I cannot Google), long shelves of encyclopedias come to mind. The Americana and the Colliers sets of my youth were sources of lots of cool info, like how to make gunpowder, but they were woefully short on facts about girls and sex."
"Several years ago I had a customer who occasionally bought an expensive book. He was not a regular, but sometimes came by to buy something, I think to reward himself for business deals that had gone well. He drove a flashy car, a Porsche that he was very proud of. He usually sprang out of it, wearing an Armani suit, an open white shirt and a gold chain around his fleshy, tanned neck. One day he arrived unannounced - looking distraught."
"It's a thrilling experience, a rite of passage into the trade. A member of the public thinks so highly of your skills as a book maven, (or your status as a cash cow), that they invite you into their private space to examine, and make an offer on, their books. You get to walk around pronouncing on the current state of the market, on what's hot and what's not, all the while maintaining an ingratiating stream of patter that, you hope, will convince the owner that you're a sage and trustworthy expert."
"Had he ever been there? Perhaps he'd been a seaman earlier in his life? No, he said, the farthest they'd ever been from home was Basle in Switzerland. "I've been a postman all my life, he said, and we never had much money to spare. What Mother saved up I spent on books." 
During the 41st ILAB Congress, preceded by ILAB's International Antiquarian Book Fair, both in Paris in April 2014, the 16th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography will be awarded. The prestigious international Prize of 10.000 USD for a scholarly work in the field of bibliography is handed out every four years.
Have a look at the impressive list of the 16th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography submissions!
