The ABA and ILAB look back at a long history. The ABA is relaunching its flagship fair in London this year, the oldest antiquarian book fair in the world, under the auspices of ILAB.
This text by the late Anthony Rota, ABA bookseller and ILAB President of Honour, was published in 2008 in the ABA Directory.
The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers is celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2018. Oak Knoll Press has just published the League's "Historical Index", compiled by ILAB bookseller Nevine Marchiset.
Today the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers unites 22 national associations under one roof. Some of them had already been established when the League was founded in 1947/1948. Five of them were the driving forces: the antiquarian booksellers of Great Britain, France, Denmark, Sweden and The Netherlands.
In 1947 representatives from Great Britain, France, Denmark, Sweden and The Netherlands met in Amsterdam for a Preliminary Conference. They discussed Hertzberger’s idea of forming an organization that counteracted the animosity and suspicion engendered by the Second World War. The new International League of Antiquarian Booksellers should foster friendship and understanding between the nations as the mutual basis for a fair and professional trade in the future.
The ILAB was formally incorporated in Copenhagen in September 1948, with ten participating countries. Representatives from Belgium, Finland, Switzerland, and Italy joined their colleagues from Great Britain, France, Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands at the conference table. Denmark was holding a proxy for Norway
“Considering the dubiety with which our activities were treated it is pleasant to record that the Congresses in London in 1949 and in Paris in 1950 were very successful both socially and professionally, while the standard of hospitality in both cities was impeccable." (Muir)
The admission of Japan, the ILAB Bibliography Prize (now ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography) and the first ILAB International Antiquarian Book Fair were the milestones of the 60s.
The 16th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography will be awarded in 2014 to one or more bibliographies or books about books published between 2009 and 2012. Seven books have already been submitted, among them bibliographies, biographies, library catalogues, studies on bookbinding and conference papers about "Early Printed Books as Material Object". They come from France, Italy, the United States, Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom.
"Nearly half a century ago, the Rosenbach Museum and Library began building a relationship with the young author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, who very quickly started using the townhouse museum on Delancey Place as a repository for his original drawings, manuscripts, proofs, and rare editions. Through the years the numbers mounted, and today about 10,000 items of Sendakiana, from original artwork to finished editions, fill the Rosenbach - the museum's best calling card with generations that grew up with his books.But now that card is being recalled."
My internship in Spain is over – six weeks, spent in this beautiful country, has ended up and I am back to Russia to my family. These two weeks in Madrid were full of impressions and events. Gonzalo Fernandes Pontes, president of AILA, and his wife Lourdes made everything to enrich my knowledge in antiquarian books and its market, to help me with my research, not to talk about their hospitality and readiness to give me a hand anytime.
"Experts from The University of Manchester's John Rylands Library are to spend four days at a beautiful seventeenth century mansion to capture its world famous Canterbury Tales manuscript on camera ...
Sales higher in bookshops with cafés: This is the astonishing insight taken from a statistical analysis by the Booksellers' Association. What shall we make out of it? Antiquarian bookshops offering tea and coffee with (on) leather bindings? First editions with red wine? Japanese block books with sushi?
A couple of appearances for me on the maps course last week, but a full-time commitment to the Modern First Editions course this week. Booksellers generally love talking, of course – especially about books (and even more about themselves) – so it's been an excellent week. A delightful if very mixed group of students. The course well under way on Monday with a discursive session on the history and background of collecting modern books, the intellectual rationale of collecting, the nuances of textual transmission, the meaning of 'modern' in this context and the first appearance of author-collecting guides.
