|
7.02.15.
Recovering the Doves Type
In 1916, the Doves Type was seemingly lost forever after it was thrown into the River Thames. Almost 100 years later, and after spending three years making a digital version, designer Robert Green has recovered 150 pieces from their watery grave ... more Add a comment Maps that shaped the world
Bursting with information and often incredibly beautiful - maps do more than just showing you where you are, or where you might be going. Here we tell the stories behind some fascinating examples ... more Add a comment The handmade tale
Commonplace reading matter may be increasingly reduced to pixels on a digital device, but the book as an art form still has its fans. In particular - as an antidote perhaps to the growing preponderance of technology - more and more people seem to consider handmade books worthy of conversation and collection. That is the message that will be delivered by CODEX 2015, a biennial four-day book fair and symposium that is about to take place in the San Francisco Bay area ... more Add a comment Inflame her to venery with wanton kisses
A first edition of the 17th-century bestseller Aristotle's Masterpiece goes under the hammer this weekend. But just how enlightened was this Enlightenment sex manual? ... more Add a comment
6.02.15.
A pop-up from the past
Two centuries before Robert Sabuda began thrilling readers with bold feats of paper engineering, there was Leopold Chimani, whose 1827 Naturgemahlde is a brilliant example of 19th century multi-dimensional illustration, and part of London bookseller Simon Beattie's California Book Fair cataloge ... more Add a comment
5.02.15.
Codebreaking materials devised by Turing discovered
During restoration work at Bletchley Park, papers which had been stuffed between the roof rafters to act as insulation were discovered and found to include unique surviving examples of Banbury Sheets. At the end of World War II all the documentary evidence connected with breaking the communication codes of the German High Command was ordered to be destroyed. However, nobody thought to investigate the roof space! ... more Add a comment An Anti-Suffrage Children's Book From 1910
Anti-suffrage literature printed in the 1910s, as suffrage activists in the United States ramped up their campaign for enfranchisement, took a number of clever forms. Advocates like the members of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage tried to portray a desire for the franchise as foreign to women's nature ... more Add a comment
4.02.15.
'Gospel of the Lots of Mary' found
An ancient gospel has been discovered in the pages of a diminutive book dating back to the 6th century. The text, dubbed the 'Gospel of the Lots of Mary' is written in Coptic and contains oracles that would have been used to provide support and reassurance to people seeking help for problems. It is not a gospel in the traditional sense, because it doesn't predominantly teach about Christ, and its translator suggests that the discovery could rewrite the ancient definition and purpose of gospels ... more Add a comment London’s fabled book runners
Two legends in the London Antiquarian Book Trade who continue to fascinate me are Driff and Stone, London's famous book runners. (Martin Stone has been profiled a few times, Driff less so) ... more Add a comment A million rare documents damaged in Moscow library fire
A fire that ripped through one of Russia's largest university libraries is believed to have damaged over one million historic documents, with some describing the fire as a cultural "Chernobyl" ... more Add a comment
3.02.15.
Jane Austen family letters offer ‘deeply personal’ insight
A window into the life of Jane Austen's mother's family, the Leighs of Adlestrop, is promised by an unpublished collection of manuscripts which are set to "draw back the curtain on the formalities of society" in Regency England ... more Add a comment Iconic Tintin comic book cover fetches incredible price
The original cover design for Tintin adventure "The Shooting Star" has been sold for $A3.63 million in a near-record for a work by the boy detective's Belgian creator Herge ... more Add a comment A brief history of the dust jacket
As most collectors are aware, a dust jacket in fine condition can greatly enhance the value of a book. Indeed, for modern first editions, a book without the dust jacket will sell for only a fraction of the price. Once intended to be temporary and disposable protection for beautifully bound books, dust jackets have become - in some ways - more valuable than the books they protect. How and when did this change occur? ... more Add a comment |
