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.
Turin and Melbourne book fairs cancelled, Paris postponed to September!
This is an update supplied by the national member associations of ILAB of date changes and cancellations of upcoming book fairs.
ILAB has started compiling a list of events that have been cancelled due to the COVID19 outbreak.
Regular updates will be posted here as soon as they have been announced officially.
As Rare Book Week draws near, I find myself scrolling through booksellers’ preview catalogues and lists for the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair, which opens on Thursday, March 5, and runs through Sunday, March 8.
Thousands of book lovers, booksellers, and scholars will converge in Southern California for the 53rd California International Antiquarian Book Fair over the weekend of February 7-9, 2020.
"For many people in the west mention of Japanese woodblock prints brings to mind the beautiful single sheet colour examples by artists such as Hokusai, Hiroshige and the many other artists of extraordinary skill working during the 18th and 19th centuries. Immense pleasure can also be gained from looking a little further and discovering the plethora of games, decorative papers, books, calendars, lists, news-sheets, maps, advertising, and ephemeral material of every kind that was published using woodblock printing methods during the Edo and Meiji periods." Sally Burdon's collecting tip is one of the highlights of BookFare 2, the recently published newsletter of the Australian & New Zealand Association of Antiquarian Booksellers (ANZAAB). Read the article and subscribe to further issues!
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. All ILAB booksellers are very welcome to join the ILAB Internship Program and to provide young students an opportunity to gain invaluable hands-on experience in the international rare book business at any time and in any place in the world. Applicants are carefully chosen after they have contacted ILAB Vice-President Norbert Donhofer, who has initiated the Internship Program in 2009 together with Eric Waschke (Canada) and Professor Dr. Olga Tarakanowa (Moscow State University of the Printing Arts). Former interns spent six to eight weeks in Austria, Netherlands, Germany and Hungary (Alena Lavrenova and Anastasya Zhikhareva), Australia (Pavel Chepyzhov), the United Kingdom (Valentina Rudnitskaya), the United States (Julia Kulyamzina), and in Spain (Ksenia Batueva). Right now ILAB is looking for the following internship:
In 2011 Italy celebrates its 150th anniversary of its unification, while one of Italy's most famous rare bookshops celebrates its 100th anniversary. The Italian Academy of Art in New York honoured both events with a "Colazione Letteraria" on April 8 , 2011, including lectures by David Freedberg, Professor of Art History at Columbia University, and Umberto Pregliasco who recounted the remarkable history of the Libreria Pregliasco which he now runs in the third generation. Watch the video on Vimeo.
With the Frankfurt Book Fair coming up this week and the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2015 Leah Dobrinska of Books Tell You Why focuses on a very special book collecting theme: "Awarded each year since 1901 (except in 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1942, and 1943), the Nobel Prize in Literature is an obvious litmus test for exceptional writers. While there have, of course, been a fair share of "snubs" in the past 100+ years, many of the greatest authors in recent history bear the title "Nobel laureate." As a result, collecting Nobel Prize winners makes good sense: there's a list to follow; a new author is chosen each year from all around the globe, allowing for an eclectic reach (many congratulations to the 2015 winner from Belarus, Svetlana Alexievich!); and your collection will be filled with the best of the best." Read more:
We went to the Grand Palais this June to enjoy the fair, buy some books and see old and new friends. The Grand Palais near the Arc de Triomphe is very spacious compared to the previous location of the fair at the Maison de la Mutualité in the Latin Quarter. There were many French dealers of course, but there seemed to be fewer dealers from other countries this year as compared to a few years before.
"Dear Bibliodeviant, I miss you terribly. I long for those sultry evenings we spent in your simple, rustic lakeside retreat sipping Chateau Mouton-Rothschild and eating sweetmeats. Most of all I miss curling up on your ethically sourced Kilim rug in front of a roaring log fire while you told me those gloriously witty stories about how the printers misspelled "Wade" for "Wabe" in the first edition of Through The Looking Glass, or how bookdealers in the past have charged high prices for copies of the Time Machine that didn't have Hall Caine's The Manxman on the first page of advertisments. I yearn for you, and your thrilling tales of the swashbuckling world of the rare book trade. Return to me immediately, and talk to me of fine bindings! Monica"
