In the 1970s, theatre writer and bibliophile John Wolfson began accumulating what was to become one of the largest and most rare collections of works on Shakespeare in the world.
Un salon en pleine expansion...
Le SALON LIVRES RARES & OBJETS D’ART qui s’est tenu sous la nef du Grand Palais du 12 au 14 avril réunissait 181 libraires dont 55 étrangers venant de 14 pays différents, et 52 experts en objets d’art.
Sous la nef du Grand Palais, le Salon du Livre Rare va accueillir 27 nouveaux exposants soit au total 160 exposants dont 43 venant de 14 pays différents.
Playwrights and Philanthropy …. Shakespeare’s Globe becomes 2019 Charity Partner for Firsts - London’s Rare Book Fair and the world’s largest independent marketplace for rare and out-of-print books - Biblio - joins as the new Official Partner.
The 52nd California Book Fair will open its doors today. Over 200 international and US booksellers will be present at this major event of the rare book trade.
From the Wonderful to the Weird – The 52nd California International Antiquarian Book Fair brings thousands of books, manuscripts and other treasures and collections to Oakland
The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers does not encourage collecting books for investment purposes. We can tell what the price of a book was in the past, how that price has developed, we can tell what it will cost now to own a copy, but we cannot predict what its future price will be. Our advice is always: buy what you like, what pleases you, what interests you, what fits within your areas of collecting or interest, buy the best copy available (and affordable to you) at the moment you want to buy the book. The reason for collecting is love and interest in the subject, the author, the period, what the book represents, the love and desire to own the original or best edition of a particular book. Books may have an added value through an important dedication or provenance, or because of an exceptional binding, or because it has the signature of an important previous owner. But while one man may think a 1.000 US$ for a particular book is very expensive, the collector who has been looking for that same book for a long time may feel the 1.000 US$ is a bargain, if it fills an important gap in his library or collection. If, and I say if, it is an investment, than it is a long-term investment, a savings account, and you use money that you're sure you won't be needing for a long, long time, and nobody guarantees you anything. If you're looking for a quick return on investment, forget it. The bottom-line is: don't buy them as an investment: it is the wrong angle to look at books. Buy them because you love books, you love a subject, a historical figure, a period. Build a collection and become the expert on the subject. ... It is the voyage that will give you incomparable pleasure, not the arrival at the destination. If you must invest, invest in yourself: enrich yourself: not your bank account.
The endowment of the ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography has recently been funded with a further generous donation of $25,000 from the B.H. Breslauer Foundation of New York — Submissions are currently being accepted for the 2022 prizes.
I'm curious to hear from readers about how, or whether, the concept of 'rarity' entered your lives, and how it has expressed itself. Have you become, like Warren, a passionate collector of some obscure and wonderful class of object? Or, like me, become a dealer - that is, someone with all of the instincts, but none of the patience, of a collector? Or were you that guy out in the Best Buy parking lot at 3 in the morning? And how have other circumstances in your life - relative wealth or poverty; marriage and children; career, religion, race, politics, sexual orientation - how do you reckon these have informed your collecting (or non-collecting) habits?
A well-known poet of our acquaintance used to refer to Eudora Welty as "Aunt Meatloaf." When queried about it, his justification was "Well, everyone likes meatloaf, don't they?"
"For Balazs Mikusi, a young Hungarian musicologist, it was the find of a lifetime. Leafing through folders of unidentified manuscripts at the National Szechenyi Library in Budapest recently, he came across four pages of what looked to him like Mozart's handwriting. As he read through the music, he told Agence France-Presse, he realized that he had stumbled onto Mozart's own score of the Piano Sonata in A, K.331 – one of the best-known Mozart sonatas because of its "Rondo alla Turca" finale. To verify his impression Mr. Mikusi showed a copy of the score to Ulrich Leisinger, the director of the Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg, and Neal Zaslaw, the editor of the new Köchel catalog of Mozart's works. Both agreed that the writing was Mozart's …" Most spectacular finds of rare books and manuscripts nowadays happen by chance. A Hungarian scholar had such a lucky moment, when he worked in the National Szechenyi Library in Budapest and discovered - a Mozart manuscript.
Beautiful, rare and unusual books are in steady demand in an economically unsteady world. After three busy days the Stuttgart Book Fair closed with excellent results. Almost all the 80 exhibitors from Europe and the USA reported five or even six-digit sales. At the opening on Friday, 27th January, the stands were crowded. The high quality of the items in the Book Fair Catalogue had attracted dealers and collectors from Europe and overseas as well as museums, libraries and archives. So it is not surprising that many catalogue highlights changed hands within the first few minutes. Among them were Napoleon's personal copy of "Ossian" (Fons Blavus 150,000 €) or De Bry's "Collectiones Peregrinatium (Patzer & Trenkle 90,000 €). Heribert Tenschert, who exhibited a stunning collection of early manuscripts and books all written and printed on vellum, was very satisfied with the attention which this collection commanded from dealers and collectors.
