Art trade associations have been lobbying to be recognised as “non-essential retail” in phase two of the lockdown exit roadmap; museums will have to wait until phase three in July.
After weeks and weeks of devastating news, ongoing cancellations and postponements, booksellers had to learn to come to terms with the new reality amidst the COVID19 crisis. However, in many places it resulted in positive ideas and initiatives that are worth sharing with the bookselling community. Let's start with a more lighthearted note. Everyone has missed books ... but also music!
The organisers of FIRSTS LONDON, the Antiquarian Booksellers Association UK have announced that the 2020 fair is now cancelled due to the COVID 19 crisis.
Due to the current worldwide COVID 19 - crisis, the Paris Salon du Livre Rare / Paris Rare Book Fair was postponed to a new date in September: 4 - 6 September 2020.
Earlier today, the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) hosted a 90-minute webinar to discuss how the COVID-19 health crisis is affecting antiquarian booksellers around the world.
Sarah Wyman Whitman was a gifted painter who was also a prominent hostess to Boston culture, married to a prosperous wool merchant. She was a student of the painter William Morris Hunt, and also studied in France with Hunt's teacher, Thomas Couture. She met Couture and Hunt's earlier student, the multi-talented American painter and illustrator John La Farge, who was responsible for the revival of stained glass in America, and apprenticed with him. Hunt had also studied with Millet, and brought the influence of the Barbizon School to La Farge and Whitman. The earliest example of her book cover design is on Verses by Susan Coolidge, published in Boston by Roberts Brothers in 1880. Whitman adapted Rossetti's concept of stylized Japanese medallions, creating what might be the first American "Aesthetic" binding.
Where do you start with a place like Vegas? Bally's Hotel and Casino is hosting the 2014 Moose International convention and dealing with a chronic shortage of aquatic plant life, willow shoots, and other forage. Hairy guys with backwards baseball caps. Old men and their leisurewear. Fatties in mobile chairs work away, tethered to slot machines. A Bally's credit card at the other end of the line drips the money in and out. The tether prevents the card from being stolen, lost, or forgotten. Sorry, sir, no photographs. What is the plural of Moose ? Do the International Moose employ it?
Once a year, the Committee of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) gets together to talk about the problems and challenges facing the League. This Committee consists of the officers of the League that actually do the day-to-day work of this international organization composed of 21 countries. The meeting falls half way between the Presidents Meeting and the Congress, with events held in alternating years in the fall of the year. For the last three years, the Committee Meeting has been held in Gimenelles, a quiet hotel about an hour outside Barcelona.
I like to try and find material relating to the history of performance, both in music and the theatre, and my library customers in particular are always looking for things they can use for exhibitions, for teaching, or to attract researchers. In other words, the unique. Here is one such book. Bound in black morocco by W. S. Johnson, it is a careful contemporary record of the 1849 season at Her Majesty's Theatre in London.
The Bibliography Prize 2012 of the Syndicat National de la Librairie Ancienne et Moderne (SLAM) will be awarded to Martine Delaveau and Yann Sordet for: « L'Imitation de Jésus-Christ (1470-1800). » Etudes et catalogue collectif des fonds conservés à la bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, à la Bibliothèque Nationale de France, à la Bibliothèque Mazarine et à la Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne. Coédition BnF / Bibliothèque Mazarine / Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, 2011. 21 x 29,7 cm, hardcover, 520 pages, 113 illustrations.
The quotations are taken from memoirs and articles about the League: Barbara Kaye, Second Impression. Rural Life with a Rare Bookman. Oak Knoll Press 1995Menno Hertzberger, The Origin of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers and Its First Few Years (in: Aus dem Antiquariat 9, 1977)
Menno Hertzberger, Boeken, veel boeken - en mensen. Herinneringen aan Internationaal Antiquariaat Menno Hertzberger 1920-1970, Vantilt 2008
Percy H. Muir, Half a League Onward (in: Aus dem Antiquariat 9, 1977) Georges A. Deny, Le Prix Triennal de Bibliographie fondé par La Ligue Internationale de la Librairie Ancienne (in: Aus dem Antiquariat 9, 1977) Anton Gerits, Books, Friends and Bibliophilia. Reminiscences of an Antiquarian Bookseller. Oak Knoll Press 2004Out of Print and into Profit. A History of the Rare and Secondhand Book Trade in Britain in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Giles Mandelbrote. The British Library and Oak Knoll Press 2006Sheila Markham, A Book of Booksellers. Conversations with the Antiquarian Book Trade 1991-2003. Sheila Markham Rare Books and Oak Knoll Press 2007
Chapters and excerpts are published (with the permission of Bob Fleck and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels) on this website.
