For the first time in its 43 year history, the Australian and New Zealand Association of Antiquarian Booksellers (ANZAAB) have united to publish a joint catalogue containing nearly $1,000,000 of rare books, manuscripts and artworks for sale.
Access to reliable and relevant information is vital in a time of crisis. Many of our colleagues are concerned about the following weeks and months, have spend weeks re-organizing the business, were forced to lock up shops, send staff on leave or furlough or are simply in lockdown at home.
Events and fairs in the rare book world were cancelled or postponed all over the world. Now is the time to stand together as a worldwide trade.
AMOR LIBRORUM NOS UNIT - THE LOVE OF BOOKS UNITES US.
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?
"A tiny drawing of a kangaroo curled in the letters of a 16th-century Portuguese manuscript could rewrite Australian history. The document, acquired by Les Enluminures Gallery in New York, shows a sketch of an apparent kangaroo (''canguru'' in Portuguese) nestled in its text and is dated between 1580 and 1620. It has led researchers to believe images of the marsupial were already being circulated by the time the Dutch ship Duyfken - long thought to have been the first European vessel to visit Australia - landed in 1606." Read the whole story by Charli Newton in The Age:
Oak Knoll is pleased to join UNESCO's literacy campaign on World Book and Copyright Day. As specialists in the field of "books about books" (printing history, book production, and bibliography), Oak Knoll is particularly well-acquainted with the importance of books in our lives and throughout history. They will be joined by two more ABAA dealers and bookselling friends for the Pop Up Book fair. Ian Brabner Rare Americana (rareamericana.com) of Wilmington, Delaware, will display a selection of rare books, manuscripts, and ephemera from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American history. Between the Covers Rare Books (betweenthecovers.com) will travel from Gloucester City, New Jersey with a showing of modern literary first editions.
Those collectors, who have discovered the beauty and incredible variety of contemporary artistic picture books , are aware of the important initiatives which were set in the 1960s in European children's book art. In these years the contemporary art (as for example Surrealism and Pop art) „came into" children's book illustration, and since that time there is no doubt that certain picture books can be esteemed as „contemporary book-art" - and their artists as book-artists (and not only as illustrators!) A just published catalogue of two Parisian Book Galleries shows this in a tremendous exemplification (Chez les libraires associés and Librairie Michèle Noret).
On UNESCO World Book & Copyright Day 2015 ILAB booksellers brought the books to the people. They popped up at the most unexpected places, in schools, at train stations, restaurants, pubs, schools, museums, libraries, woolsheds, business clubs, in the streets, on boats, on skyscrapers. For 24 hours they were part of a great chain of books spanning across the world, raising over 10,000 Euros to support literacy worldwide and showing the most beautiful bookish items to people many of whom had never seen or touched such treasures before. It was an amazing experience. See the video on Youtube!
„When I look back at the plight of American research libraries in 2010, I feel inclined to break into a jeremiad. In fact, I want to deliver three jeremiads, because research libraries are facing crises on three fronts; but instead of prophesying doom, I hope to arrive at a happy ending." Robert Darnton analyses the present – and future – situation of University Libraries.
