ILAB News 13

"Books know no frontiers"

"When we go back, we shall be able to identify a face, a personality, with their signatures; signatures that are often known of colleagues with whom we have often done business and already esteem but whom we shall now know in a new light." (André Poursin)

The ABA welcomed the ILAB booksellers to their Third International Conference in London in 1949 where they enjoyed a week full of discussions about the future of the League and full of delightful events including dinners and dance and the entrance of a strange looking person who welcomed Ernest Maggs as "Tovarisch". ILAB Congresses are the real thing, now and 60 years ago.

ILAB - The International Family

"Rare book dealers need more than 'Fingerspitzengefühl', they need a kind of sixth sense, paired with profound knowledge. It's instinct." ILAB President Arnoud Gerits on his life and career, the qualities of a rare book dealer, success and mistakes, and ILAB: the international family.

Danger! Does the "Book Dust Disease" Threaten the Rare Book Trade?

Dust on the shelves. Collectors consider it romantic, dealers live with it. As early as 1900 Eduard Fischer von Röslerstamm published an empirical analysis on the life expentancy of antiquarian booksellers, librarians and book collectors. His question was: Did they suffer from dust in the lungs?

Beautiful Books - New Catalogues

Circus, erotica, Maupassant, Flaubert, Camus, travel, curiosities, technical revolutions, books about books, autographs, Humanism and Renaissance, Australian posters ... If it does not stop raining in summer, have a good read! Catalogues by ILAB dealers, recently published.

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Summer Reading - All Around the World

The Polar Regions: Chilling Tales From the Icy Wastes

They have always had a huge attraction on mankind and its explorers. What lay in or beyond those icy wastes? An open sea? The way to Asia? Gold? Hell? Paradise? Many set out to find out, never to return. Most of the gruesome tragedies in the icy reaches will never be known or told, but several made it into print from the 16th to the 20th century. Frank Werner's top ten of chilling tales from the polar regions.

Asia: Playing Cards in Japan

For many people mention of Japanese woodblock prints brings to mind the beautiful single sheet colour examples by artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige. Immense pleasure can also be gained from discovering the plethora of games, decorative papers, books, calendars, news-sheets, maps, and advertising that was published using woodblock printing methods during the Edo and Meiji periods. A collecting tip by Sally Burdon.

Africa: Early Adventures on an Unknown Continent

Printing with movable type was being introduced in the same century as European travellers were setting out to explore Africa and the New World. The three areas first discovered and hence written about in sub-Saharan Africa were west Africa, an area extending for some considerable area around the mouth of the Congo river, and the Land of Prester John: Abyssinia or Ethiopia. How the Europeans learned about Africa: Michael Graves-Johnston describes the most beautiful early printed travel accounts.

Egypt: The Cairo Genizah

Linda Hedrick has discovered a very special place in Egypt: "The most famous for both its size and contents is the Cairo Genizah. Almost 180,000 Jewish manuscript fragments were found in the genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo. More fragments were found in the Basatin Cemetery east of Old Cairo, and some old documents were bought in Cairo in the late 19th century. The first European to "discover" them was Simon van Geldern (an ancestor of Heinrich Heine, the 19th century poet) who visited the synagogue about 1752."

America: Every Boy Needs A Hero

Spiderman or Tom Swift? In the first half of the 20th Century, American boys often found their heroes in print, tantalizingly displayed on the shelves of the corner drugstore. Vic Zoschak recommends the most stunning books about the real superheroes and reveals why reading gives so much more pleasure than playing computer games.