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.
For a little over 400 years - from 1559 to 1966 - the Roman Catholic Churchproscribed what could and could not be read by the Catholic faithful in a series of lists of prohibited books, the infamous Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
It would be an understatement to say that I was surprised when asked, in the middle of an ABA Council meeting, if Sandy (my wife) and I would like to attend the 39th ILAB Congress and 23rd ILAB International Book Fair in Bologna – it was an unprecedented, exciting and very generous invitation which we had no hesitation in accepting. Neither of us had visited Bologna before, and we found it to be a most beautiful city - a normal working city rather than one devoted to tourism, on an industrial base but with a wonderful, large mediaeval centre. And there are, as you will read later, wonderful libraries and museums: and the food and wine are excellent. So it was a perfect place to hold Congress.
On Saturday 17th March, the 2018 edition of the annual Stockholm Antiquarian Book Fair will open its doors! We spoke to Mats Peterson, owner of Stockholm's Centralantikvariatet in Stockholm and President of the Swedish association SVAF.
Will you be traveling to Poland anytime soon? There's no better country in Eastern Europe to seek out rare and antiquarian books, and in fact, we're pretty well convinced that Kraków and Warsaw contain some of our favorite rare bookshops in the world.
