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ILAB Library - All You Need To Know About Rare Books and the Antiquarian Book Trade
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[+] More Book Sizes and Taking Advantage of Bald Men
Published since 27 Sep 2011Book Sizes, also known as a book’s format, at first sight come across as a bit pointlessly arcane: Folio: Fo. or 2° (try and imagine the 2 as really big and the O as really small). Quarto: Qto. or 4to or even 4°. Octavo: Oct. or 8vo. Duodecimo: 12mo (usually spoken as twelvemo). Sextodecimo: 16mo (sixteenmo). Vicesimo-quarto: 24mo (twentyfourmo). Tricesimo-secundo: 32mo (thirtytwomo). They are the most commonly used. There are a myriad of variations within each theme “Crown Octavo”, “Elephant Folio” , “Royal Quarto”, “Small..”, “Squat..” etc. These are usually tied to bibliographical descriptions from SOMEONE OLD AND DISTINGUISHED tm. who wrote about this book eighty years ago and whose word has been taken ever since.
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[+] More Beautiful Bookbindings: A Thousand Years of the Bookbinder's Art, by P.J.M. Marks
Published since 26 Apr 2011From exquisite medieval bookbindings made of precious metals and jewels to the unique and highly imaginative creations of contemporary bookbinders, in his new publication P.J.M. Marks celebrates over hundred of the most beautiful bookbindings of the last thousand years
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[+] More Rare Books on Video - The Golden Age of Bookbinding
Published since 15 Mar 2011"Americans at work, in an art that is the preservation of all arts: The making of books. These men are masters of their tools, from the most primitive instruments to the latest equipments of the machine age. With other craftsmen, these are the people who make the pen mightier than the sword."
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[+] More Bookbinding & Conservation: A Sixty-Year Odyssey of Art and Craft, by Don Etherington
Published since 14 Jan 2011Don 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.
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[+] More Selling a Book by Its Cover
Published since 06 Jan 2011"It took Thatcher Wine a year to amass 2,000 well-preserved white vellum and cream-colored leatherbound books for a 'gentleman’s library' in the Northern California estate of a private equity manager. Perfectly matched sets of books bound in antique vellum, a pale leather made from goat or sheep skin, are an elusive quarry, especially if they all have to be in English, said Mr. Wine, a former Internet entrepreneur who now creates custom book collections and decorative 'book solutions', as he puts it, in his Boulder, Colo., warehouse." New York Times journalist Penelope Green visits "book decorator" Thatcher Wine. Snippets from an article about an unusual profession and about clients who - sometimes - want "the option of being able to read" their books.
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[+] More The Inside and Outside of the Book – Two Publications of The Legacy Press
Published since 06 Jan 2011The Legacy Press, established in 1997 and located in Ann Arbor (Michigan), publishes finely designed and crafted letterpress and offset printed books concerning all aspects of printing, paper, and bookbinding. Two recent publications cover the inside and the outside of The Book: Cathleen A. Baker: From the Hand to the Machine. Nineteenth-Century American Paper and Mediums: Technologies, Materials, and Conservation. Julia Miller: Books Will Speak Plain: A Handbook for Identifying and Describing Historical Bindings.
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[+] More À la découverte d’une œuvre d’art inconnue : la reliure
Published since 08 Oct 2010Ainsi l’on a des reliures carolingiennes, romanes, gothiques, Renaissance, d’autres reflétant les caractéristiques de style des différents règnes et enfin des reliures symbolistes, art nouveau, art déco, cubistes, surréalistes, etc. À partir de la fin du XIXe siècle la créativité des relieurs a été reconnue et, au siècle suivant, ils ont osé s’affranchir des vieux codes de corporations. En pratiquant des techniques nouvelles et en utilisant des matériaux inusités, les relieurs d’art ont donné pour certains la pleine mesure de leur génie et ils se sont mis enfin à signer leurs oeuvres. Le mot de génie n’est pas trop fort lorsque l’on énonce les noms de Pierre Legrain, Rose Adler, Paul Bonet, Pierre-Lucien Martin, Monique Mathieu, Jean de Gonet, pour n’en citer que quelques-uns.
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[+] More Collecting Rare Books and First Editions - Bookbindings
Published since 08 Sep 2010`Bibliopegy’ is the art of binding books, and the collector, lover or scholar of bindings is a `bibliopegist’. Bookbinding dates from the ancient world Indian, Persian, Coptic, Chinese, Greek & Roman examples are known to exist, even if only in fragments. The rise of the universities, the increase of literacy outside the monasteries, and the invention of moveable type in Germany in the 1450s, all contributed to the demand for books. With this came the demand for decorative bookbindings in leather and metal, and the introduction of goldtooling (impressions in the leather) by Islamic craftsmen who settled in Venice in the 15th century.
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[+] More The Unavoidable: The Restoration of Books
Published since 10 Feb 2010A quick look at the shelves or the show cases of exhibitors at antiquarian fairs shows how well books can withstand the bite of time. Whether the property of collectors or of libraries, many incunabula have braved the centuries without a wrinkle.
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[+] More Bookbinding and Collection Maintenance
Published since 08 Jan 2010Around January and February collectors may find one or two, sometimes more of their leather books with broken joints. “It just happened, it wasn’t like that last time I looked”. Extremes in temperature can make a book’s structure change and flex ...