ILAB bookseller Archives Fine Books is delighted to announce Ms Emily Porter, 35, of Bray Park, Queensland, Australia, has won the inaugural Archives Fine Book Collecting Prize with her entry "A Horse Lover’s Library".
Mark Hodkinson ponders the nature of our personal book collections, why and how we gather books, what it says about us, and how we ever expect to find time to read them all.
" Books, glorious books — confessions of a bibliomaniac"
As a Radio 4 documentary about book collectors airs, the Times deputy literary editor, James Marriott, who lives in a room full of volumes, admits to his problem.
Sandra Hindman is owner and founder of "Les Enluminures" with galleries in Chicago, Paris and New York specialising in manuscripts and miniatures from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the gallery also handles rings and jewelry from the same periods.
In this podcast Sandra has invited collector Benjamin Zucker and looks at their roles and relationship as dealer and collector. While this podcast focusses on the current "Diamonds" exhibition, it also reveals the fascination to collect, the handling of manuscripts and the knowledge needed to deal in historical items.
Indeed, “Books don’t just furnish a room,” Michael Dirda writes in Browsings. “. . . Digital texts are all well and good, but books on shelves are a presence in your life. As such, they become a part of your day-to-day existence, reminding you, chastising you, calling to you. Plus, book collecting is, hands down, the greatest pastime in the world.”
The Paris Review, 7th September 2018: In 2017, Honey & Wax Booksellers established an annual prize for American women book collectors, aged 30 years and younger. The idea took shape when Heather O’Donnell and Rebecca Romney, the bookstore’s owners, observed that “the women who regularly buy books from us are less likely to call themselves 'collectors' than the men, even when those women have spent years passionately collecting books."
The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA), member association of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, ILAB has just announced a new book collecting prize for young collectors, recognizing the next generation of bibliophiles! Deadline: 1 December 2018!
“I belong to that class of unfortunate beings who are addicted to a habit which it is not easy to break off. This sounds alarming, but let me assure you that neither drug nor dram is the cause of my undoing, and that I have no intention of following in the foot-steps of the English Opium-Eater. The truth is that I am a bibliophile, and I suffer a complaint common to the tribe, namely a feverish appetite which can only be assuaged by choice tit-bits in the form of ancient quartos and duodecimos”.
Don Etherington's autobiography takes the reader through his lifelong journey of bookbinding and conservation. He began bookbinding at the age of thirteen as a student at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and later went on to study bookbinding and design at the London School of Printing. Since then, he has held positions at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence, The Library of Congress, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and Information Conservation, Inc. In 1982, he co-authored with Matt Roberts Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books: A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology, the first comprehensive attempt to compile terminology from all the bookmaking and conservation fields. His works can be found in collections worldwide. Read how Don Etherington first developed his skills, and how he was instructed by George Frewin, who had worked for Sangorski & Sutcliffe.
« As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death » (Leonardo da Vinci)
2019 commemorates the 500th anniversary of da Vinci, institutions worldwide have launched events and exhibitions.
"We are very pleased about the new location, which will make the 2012 the biggest and best yet; more exhibitors, more books, maps, prints, ephemera & manuscripts in a bigger and better hall providing more space on stands, wider aisles, with ample space to sit and relax in three different cafés. We are delighted that the ABA's partner will be the National Trust, which will be promoting the many important libraries, containing over 2 million books, under its management" (Brian Lake) A hand-written account of Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens and the original illustrations for Roald Dahl's Danny, Champion of the World are among the 'written' wonders that will be on sale at the 55th London International Antiquarian Book Fair. The Fair, which will be held for the first time in the bigger National Hall at Olympia (London W14) from Thursday, 24th May to Saturday, 26th May, 2012 has more exhibitors than ever before, who are travelling from all corners of the globe to take part in the oldest Fair in the UK.
Cricket fiction may seem a small subject, but a collection could rapidly and relatively cheaply grow to several hundred items dating from 1820 to 2008. Among the earliest items would be In School and Out of School (1825) which contains a description of the game and an illustration, and Mary Mitford's Our Village (also published in the 1820's).
