On Sunday, 25th August 2018, friends and colleagues gathered at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles, to celebrate the life of Michael R. Thompson. A tribute by the library's Head Librarian Emeritus, Mr. Bruce Whiteman is published here with the permission of the author. Mr Thompson will be missed by many of his colleagues in the rare book trade.
Booksellers and collectors from across the globe mourn the loss of William Reese, antiquarian bookseller of New Haven, CT, and owner of the William Reese Company. A titan of the rare book trade who will be deeply missed.
Dr. Hans Schneider, antiquarian bookseller from Tutzing in Germany, passed away in April 2017 at the age of 96. Eberhard Köstler remembers Dr. Schneider, his legacy and a lifetime of building one of the most important antiquarian firms worldwide, specialising in music and music literature.
Bernard Rosenthal died in Oakland after a week's illness on January 14th, 2017, at the age of 96. He was a Bavarian Tuscan who carried his spiritual home with him and found in California a snug harbor.
ILAB is deeply saddened to inform its affiliates that Bob Fleck passed away on the 22nd September, following a short but very aggressive illness. Our thoughts and prayers accompany his family, and in particular his beloved wife Millie and his son Rob.
This article was first published on the website of Archives Fine Books in Australia, member of ANZAAB and affiliated to ILAB. It is published here with the permission of the author Dawn Albinger and shows the integrity of our trade. Taking our book sleuthing to a new level in 2017…
…OR,
How we cracked the cold case of a book missing from the rare books department of a major institution.
Historical events seldom create neat time periods, but in this case the century fairly defines an era. The first American color plate book, William Birch's The City of Philadelphia...As It Appeared in the Year 1800, was published in parts in 1799-1800. At the end of the century, the mid-1890s saw the dawn of the widespread use of the trichromatic half-tone process, which quickly replaced the various mediums for producing color plate book illustrations that had been in use throughout the preceding century.
On Friday, 25th May during the ABA Rare Book Fair London - the ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography with an endowment of US$ 10,000 was officially awarded to Dutch scholar Ina Kok for her masterpiece of bibliographical research "Woodcuts in Incunabula Printed in the Low Countries" - followed up on Saturday with a presentation of the book at the fair.
From February 9 - 11, 2018, Southern California hosts the
nation’s largest rare book exhibition as thousands of book lovers, booksellers, and scholars converge at the 51st California International Antiquarian Book Fair.
Eberhard Köstler, President of the German Antiquarian Booksellers' Association, has been an antiquarian bookseller and an autograph specialist for more than 30 years. He began his career in 1975, when he worked for Dr. Hans Schneider (Tutzing) during his summer holidays while studying classical Latin and Greek at the University of Munich. "At that time the German rare book trade was dominated by large companies with many employees and long traditions dating back to the 19th and early 20th century, such as Ackermann and Woelfle in Munich, Kistner in Nuremberg, Steinkopf, Neidhardt, Eggert and Kocher-Benzing in Stuttgart, Stenderhoff in Münster, Koch in Berlin or the "Hamburger Bücherkabinett" of Dr. Maria Conradt. The "golden age" of the antiquarian book trade seemed to be stable and successful. Radical changes were unthinkable." From 1988 to 2000, Eberhard Köstler had worked as an auctioneer at the Munich auction house Zisska, Schauer & Co., before he established is own business in 2000 and became VDA President in 2006. Within these years the rare book trade experienced a revolution which was totally unexpected by the elder generations of antiquarian booksellers.
"Now that you have this cookbook, what do you have?" This question appears on the first page of Julie Anna Kirsh's family cookbook, in her grandmother's hand. And it's a question that at first appears obvious: in a cookbook, you have a collection of recipes, perhaps organized by topic. But in the case of a manuscript cookbook, we can glean so much more insight than merely portions, measures, and cooking time. Manuscript cookbooks offer a glimpse into the daily lives of the women and families who recorded their recipes.
