Coming up this weekend in Hong Kong is China in Print, where thirty dealers in rare books, manuscripts, and photography will offer "the finest examples of printed works from the Far East and rest of the world." Managed by Bernard Quaritch of London and sponsored by AbeBooks, the fair anticipates a "buoyant market" in its sixth year, according to the organizers. Here's a sampling of what will be showcased:

Among the highlights at Asia Bookroom's stand will be two color woodblocks on oban tate-e sheets, diptyche style, satirically depicting the Opium War. Known as the Peking Dream Pillow, it was created by Japanese artist Imaizumi Ippy? in 1884.

New York's Jonathan A. Hill, Bookseller, will show a first edition of Kocho ruien [A Library of Chinese Classics by Courtly Scholars] published by Shaoyu Jiang in 78 parts in 1621--"one of the very few surviving 'imperial editions' printed with movable type in Japan."

One of the fair's most popular exhibits is bound to be the "lost" Agatha Christie manuscript notebook at Lucius Books. The unpublished notes relate to her novels, A Murder Has Been Arranged and They Do It With Mirrors, and her plays, Spider's Web and Miss Perry. According to the seller, "Of the 74 Agatha Christie notebooks known to exist, this recently discovered one is not only the richest in content but is the only one outside of the author's estate."
 
And from Jonkers Rare Books this beauty: a Jessie M. King hand-painted vellucent binding of The Story of Rosalynde (1902), made for Cedric Chivers. It has been called "The most beautiful, and certainly the most ornate" of King's vellucent binding designs.

Images courtesy of China in Print

Perhaps you already kicked off the holiday season with an impressive Halloween yard display. Others of you may consider Thanksgiving the traditional start to a seemingly never-ending buffet of open houses and cocktail parties. With that in mind, I humbly submit a little literary hors d'oeuvre: the Fall 2017 edition of Kitchen Work, a new, print-only quarterly journal focusing on what and how we eat and drink.                                                                                                             

Dedicated to exploring the various nooks and crannies of kitchens big and small, Kitchen Work is the brainchild of Michael Strauss, owner of the Heirloom Cafe in San-Francisco.

The journal accepts submissions from "anyone and everyone," with the caveat that the stories focus on some aspect of eating or drinking. The latest issue's theme is how automation influences--for better or worse--how we cook and how we eat. Contributors include New York Times writer Daniel Duane's musings on ambitous Christmas cookbooks, Nebraska-based chef Nick Strawhecker's post-9/11 Thanksgiving meal in Cortona, Italy, legendary wine merchant Neil Rosenthal's account of his relationship with an eccentric French winemaker, and even a solder's return to Vietnam, this time on a culinary expedition.

The 90-page volume is a charming, frothy delight, begging to be read while standing anxiously in the kitchen this Thanksgiving wondering if you've overcooked your holiday bird. Sheathed in cherry-red wrappers, Kitchen Work would also make a lovely holiday present for the bookish gastronome in your life. At twelve dollars apiece, you may even be tempted to give one to yourself.

A research visit to the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale last week afforded me the opportunity to see its current, magnificent exhibition, Making the Medieval English Manuscript: The Takamiya Collection. Drawn from the Beinecke's collection of manuscripts, as well as from the collection of Japanese collector Toshiyuki Takamiya, on deposit at the university since 2013. "With a rare combination of scholarly and antiquarian expertise, Professor Emeritus Takamiya of Keio University in Tokyo assembled an unrivaled collection of medieval manuscripts over four decades," said curator Raymond Clemens in a press release earlier this year.

Takamiya's Chaucer manuscripts have starring roles in this exhibition, including the beautiful deluxe Devonshire Chaucer and the "unprepossessing" Sion College copy of the Canterbury Tales, written as early as 1460 and relatively unadorned. But my personal favorite from the Takamiya collection was the fifteenth-century English prayer roll. According to the exhibition notes, the long, narrow scroll was intended as a "birth girdle," to be worn by a woman during childbirth. Containing illustrations of the Passion and a series of prayer texts, it was meant to provide "heavenly aid" when worn prayer-side in. Illuminated manuscript as physic; who knew? Another favorite was the Beinecke's Latin-English illustrated vocabulary manuscript, made in England between 1400-1500 (pictured above).  

The exhibition remains on view through December 10.

Image credit: Rebecca Rego Barry

The Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair opens today, the perfect prompt to preview one of the show's incredible highlights, courtesy of John Windle: two original etchings from William Blake's Songs of Innocence and a single relief etching of the poem "Holy Thursday."

First, a little background: In the 1780s, Blake revived the art of manuscript illumination, believing, in part, that the Industrial Revolution had degraded an art form into nothing more than a simple commodity. In response, Blake and his wife Catherine painstakingly printed, bound, and hand colored each book he produced. Few originals survive--only nine copies of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell are known to exist, for example. Slightly more endure--forty, to be precise--of Songs of Innocence, the first of Blake's illuminated works and is a celebration of youthful innocence. 

                                                                                                                                                                                    Windle's interest in Blake began in the 1960s when he worked for famed London book dealer Bernard Quaritch, which led to Windle's opening of a San Francisco gallery devoted entirely to the 18th-century poet. Richard Davies at ABEbooks recently visited the Blake Gallery and spoke with Windle, which you can read here. 

The two plates at the Boston book fair hail from Copy Y, an incomplete copy that resurfaced in Cologne, Germany, in 1980. Printed in light brown on separate sheets with extensive hand-coloring in watercolor and additions in black ink, the two etchings are available for $250,000.

Also available from John Windle is a single sheet relief etching from Songs of Innocence called "Holy Thursday." This plate comes from Copy W, one of Blake's proof printings for Songs of Innocence and is considered one of the earliest existing examples of Blake's attempts at illuminated printing. The poem itself refers to Ascension Day, when London orphanages traditionally washed, dressed, and paraded thousands of their charges to St. Paul's Cathedral for a special ceremony, and the verses contrast the brilliant ceremony with the bleak, somber reality that awaited the children afterwards. "Holy Thursday" is available for $150,000.

                                                                                                                                                                                     Images courtesy of John Windle

Our Bright Young Librarians series continues today with Angela DiVeglia, Curatorial Assistant at Providence Public Library Special Collections.

What is your role at Providence Public Library?

My job title is Curatorial Assistant; I work under the Head Curator of Collections, as one of four members of the Special Collections Department. I work on exhibitions and loans, do the bulk of our rare book cataloging, process the odd (sometimes very odd) archival collection, teach classes, coordinate our annual Creative Fellowship, and act as the liaison to the local arts and design community.

How did you get started in rare books?

In the early 2000's, I was living in Boston and working in public education, as well as working with an awesome collective of people to start the Papercut Zine Library. We began with a few boxes of zines and comic books, creating our own custom cataloging system and hand-illustrated library cards. (The library still exists, and now has over 16,000 items in its collection!) Our collection grew rapidly through donations from zine authors, comics artists, bookstores and distros, and collectors; alongside the usual materials, donors would occasionally approach us with incredible ephemera and printed materials documenting social movements and underground music in and around Boston. We often couldn't accept these historical materials (we didn't have climate control, we had irregular open hours--while our values aligned with our donors', we frequently weren't the most appropriate home for these materials), but this planted a deep seed in me as I realized that 1. Someone desperately needed to be documenting social movements and subcultures, and the impetus had to come from the communities being documented, and 2. I wanted to build the skill set to do this kind of work!

I began researching MLS programs that year, with encouragement from an anonymous reference librarian at the Boston Public Library. Before that, I had only been vaguely aware of archives as a field. I wish it had been on my career radar earlier! After working in a number of community libraries and infoshops in New England and in the mid-south, earning an MLS, processing incredible working archival collections on-site at The Highlander Center (a popular education center in East Tennessee) and Bread and Puppet Theater (a political puppet theater in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont), and working as a tech services and reference librarian, I finally ended up in my current position at the Providence Public Library. Phew! It's amazing to have a job where I make use of all the disparate knowledge and skills that I've acquired through my atypical career trajectory.

Where did you earn your MLS?

I got my MLS at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a focus in archives. While I was there, I was fortunate to have a graduate assistantship working on the North Carolina Maps project, which still heavily informs my ideas about metadata and access points. I also spent a year working as the graduate intern in the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University's Rubenstein Library. It was a fantastic experience, and exposed me to all the different aspects of hands-on archival work, from processing enormous archival collections to meeting with donors to helping researchers with extensive projects. (One particularly memorable project involved a researcher recreating an art installation from an artist whose papers are in Duke's collections; I somehow ended up pushing a book cart of half-dressed mannequin parts through the library, which remains a real career highlight.) 

Favorite rare book / ephemera that you've handled?

This is an impossible question to answer! I feel like I discover new and incredible things in our collections almost every day.

Some books at PPL that I return to over and over are early 20th century folios of pochoir prints by E. A. Séguy depicting nature-based and geometric patterns. Pochoir prints are made using layers--sometimes dozens or even hundreds of layers--of highly-detailed stencils, colored with super-pigmented ink using oversized pompom-esque brushes. The colors in these folios are unbelievably vibrant given their age, and the "wow" factor is high--everyone who sees them gasps! (We put together a really fun exhibit in 2015 where we had local artists look at these and other pattern books, and then use them as the basis for new creative work.)

What do you personally collect?

I live in a very small house, so my collecting capacity is limited. I do have a sizeable collection of antique bottles and sea glass; I'm a huge fan of historical trash. I like how much old bottles can tell us about the consumption habits and day-to-day lives of people in the past.

What do you like to do outside of work?

I'm an avid urban gardener, which currently means spending the bulk of my non-work daylight hours building increasingly absurd infrastructure to deter my neighborhood's marauding citified woodchucks. I raise chickens, which are an endless source of entertainment. I also love sewing and knitting, bike riding, and attending Providence's seemingly endless number of strange and wonderful arts events.

What excites you about rare book librarianship?

I'm very excited about books as physical objects. I love the tactile experience of opening a book, and I love being able to share that with researchers, especially ones who are new to special collections research. (Favorite reading room moment in recent memory: someone opening a historic magazine and exclaiming, "I can't believe I'm allowed to touch this!") Through my experience at PPL, I've found that younger researchers and teens have a kind of reverence for physical materials, and they understand the specialness of unique items in a world of endless digital duplication. As long as we continue developing methods of effective outreach and increasing our collections' accessibility, I think special collections are in good shape moving forward.

Speaking of outreach and accessibility, I'm incredibly lucky to work at PPL alongside colleagues who share my belief that preservation is futile if it isn't also tied to accessibility--that we save items so that they can be used, even if the two activities can seem at odds. I'm also delighted to work somewhere that doesn't prioritize specific kinds of use--a tattoo artist or a teen clothing designer is just as welcome to view our rare materials as a scholar. Use brings materials alive, as they're touched, incorporated into new scholarly or creative work, and brought into conversation with contemporary ideas.

Thoughts on the future of special collections / rare book librarianship?

As I mentioned, I believe that special collections have a really, shall I say, special place in a tech-heavy world. In PPL's outreach, we often refer to the "immersive research experience", which I think is a huge selling point for our collections. Because of the slower pace of special collections research, our users can spend whole afternoons absorbed in a particular visual or intellectual topic. Also--and I especially find this with our visual researchers and artists--it's very valuable to see information within its broader context, instead of isolated like it would be in online search results. It's a much richer experience.

Any unusual or interesting collection at your library you'd like to draw our attention to?

I think that one of the most underutilized collections at PPL is our sizeable collection of books and periodicals about textiles and the textile industry. (It's largely uncataloged, which we hope to change soon, but for now users tend to hear about it through word of mouth.) It was built up as a technical collection for people working in the textile industry, and now is a fantastic record of the history of the New England textile economy. It has information about machines and their operation/ repair, and about fibers, dyeing, and weaving. It includes fiber samples, color samples, and some fabric samples; it also has loads of information about particular mills or mill owners. (Many of the textile magazines were read by mill operatives, and they have announcements sections in the back that were like inter-mill gossip sections: what mills were bought or sold, which workers were promoted or passed away. Truly fascinating! The machinery/systems books written for mill owners, on the other hand, are almost completely silent on the fact that machines were operated by people--workers are barely mentioned, if at all.) I've seen contemporary textile artists work with this collection, digging up weaving patterns or natural dye recipes; it is also a fantastic resource for people interested in the history of regional manufacturing.

I'd also love to draw your attention to a recent project that I spearheaded: this past summer, PPL published a comic book called Lizard Ramone in Hot Pursuit: A Guide to Archives for Artists and Makers, written and illustrated by Providence artist Jeremy Ferris. Jeremy and I worked together closely for many months, discussing how archives work, what visual research looks like, useful access points for visual researchers, and common barriers to effective research. Because Jeremy is a hilarious genius, he somehow managed to translate all of this into a comic book that's as fun to read as it is informative. The comic book was designed it to be useful to our researchers, but also general enough that it could be useful at any archives, special collections library, or historical society. A bookmark-style local insert (illustrated by Providence artist O. Horvath) offers Rhode Island-specific information on local repositories. I think it's an amazing outreach tool for reaching visual artists in a medium that's familiar and accessible, and acknowledges the ways that many artists think and work.

 You can read the whole comic book online here; that webpage also includes a link to a print-ready version of the book that you can download and take to your local print shop, and a template for those wanting to make their own local inserts. It's like a mini toolkit for archivists and special collections librarians!

Any upcoming exhibitions at your library?

In addition to ongoing, smaller exhibits, PPL has an annual exhibition and program series. Our 2018 exhibition, "HairBrained," will focus on hairstyles throughout history--braids, curls, facial hair, wigs--and the ways in which hair defines and reflects culture, self-identity, agency, and politics. We're aiming to represent a variety of cultures and time periods in each exhibit case; items will range from historical postcards to an issue of The Black Panther newspaper, from early 20th century costume books with stunning color lithography to a 1726 history of pirates. You can see the exhibition at the library during the months of March-June 2018. Hair is a surprisingly complex and rich topic, and I anticipate the exhibition being both fun and challenging!

The Boston Book, Print, and Ephemera Fair, aka the 'Satellite Show,' will take place on Saturday from 8:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. at the Back Bay Events Center (within walking distance of the ABAA fair at the Hynes Auditorium). Today we're taking a look at some of the show's highlights. (View a fuller gallery here.)

First, a neat piece of publishing ephemera: a "tromp l'oeil similitude envelope that served as a 'dust jacket' advertisement" for Frances Sargent Osgood's 1849 takedown of New York's literati, A Letter About the Lions: a letter to Mabel in the country. Says the bookseller, Read 'em Again Books, "...there are only two known copies of which this is one."  

Next, a handsome first edition of Stephen Crane's War is Kind (1899), designed and illustrated by Will Bradley, who wrote to the publishers: "The book represents my best work up till now as a designer and printer. I have become greatly interested in it and want to make it my masterpiece." Offered by Boomerang Booksellers.

And from Pages of Yesteryear ... This funky illustrated anatomy book, the first book on Western medicine to be published in China, Quan to xin lun, by British medical missionary Benjamin Hobson (c. 1850s). Includes 43 full plates of human and comparative anatomy. 96 double leaves, sidesewn accordion style.

Images courtesy of Book and Paper Fairs

In January, bookseller Bernard Rosenthal passed away in Oakland, California, at the age of 96. Rosenthal was born in Munich in 1920 into a family of booksellers known throughout the industry as the "Rosenthal Dynasty." Part of the massive exodus of Jewish antiquarian booksellers from Germany during the Nazi regime--the "gentle invaders" as Rosenthal called them--he ended up in New York, where he set up shop in the 1950s. Rosenthal eventually moved to Berkeley, where he focused on medieval manuscripts and early printed books. (For more on Rosenthal and fellow emigré booksellers of the early 20th century, read Nick Basbanes' chapter "Hunters and Gatherers" in Patience & Fortitude.) Rosenthal's catalogs became the stuff of legend in the antiquarian world, in which he described easily overlooked details and craftsmanship that only came to light after careful examination of the item at hand. "We have committed the cardinal sin of the bookseller: we have READ most of these books...which has, however, brought some surprising results," Rosenthal wrote in one of his early catalogs.

Now, in memoriam to Rosenthal and his life's work, California-based booksellers Nick Aretakis, Ian Jackson, and Ben Kinmont have recently announced the publication of a new biography. Entitled Bernard M. Rosenthal (Berkeley: The Wednesday Table), the book examines Rosenthal's contributions to the antiquarian bookselling trade. Written by fellow bookseller and longtime friend Ian Jackson, the bibliography traces Rosenthal's life and career, while also highlighting the bookseller's ability to thrive in a notoriously difficult and expensive industry. 

Hand-stitched in printed dark-gray wrappers, printed on letterpress by Richard Seibert, and issued in a limited-edition run of 400 numbered copies, the folio-sized book is available for $60. Contact Nick Aretakis at naretakis@mindspring.com, Ian Jackson at jancosinka@gmail.com, or Ben Kinmont at bkinmont@gmail.com to order. Required reading for antiquarian booksellers and historians alike.

Next weekend it's Boston's turn to host rare book collectors, dealers, and librarians. These bibliophiles will have their choice of two book fairs -- the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair (Nov. 10-12) and the Boston Book & Ephemera Show (Nov. 11) -- one auction, and numerous exhibitions. On the blog this week, we'll be previewing some highlights.

Capping off this 'year of Thoreau,' today we feature three manuscript survey maps by Henry D. Thoreau, all of which head to auction at Skinner on November 12.

Here is Thoreau's "Plan of a Woodlot in Lincoln and Concord Mass.," from April 30, 1857. In brown ink on heavy wove paper, this survey marks out a three-acre piece of land and is docketed on the verso in Thoreau's hand. The estimate is $3,000-5,000.

Thoreau executed this "Plan of Robert D. Gilson's Mill in Littleton, Mass.," on May 9, 1857. In red and brown ink on heavy wove paper, this signed survey shows sketches of stone walls, the buildings, dam flume, and curb wheel. The estimate is $4,000-6,000.

The third and most colorful of the lot is this "Plan of that Part of Thomas Brooks' Woodlot, in Lincoln, Mass, which was burned over in the fall of 1857," completed on June 5, 1858. This large survey is also done in brown ink, but finished in green and red watercolors. The estimate is $5,000-7,000.

Images via Skinner

Three Women Playing Instruments, by Katsushika ?i [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

                                                                                                                                                                                                  A few months ago, a curator at the Honolulu Museum of Art stumbled upon a rare 19th-century manual on Japanese art that he didn't even know existed in the museum archives. Stephen Salel had been searching for materials for an exhibition devoted to female Japanese manga artists. Recognized today as a subgenre of graphic novels, manga as an artform dates to the nineteenth century, and Salel was looking specifically for work created by Katsushika Oi (1800-1866), considered by many experts to be the first female manga artist. If the name sounds familiar, that's probably because she was the daughter of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), whose 1823 woodblock print, The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, has been reproduced countless times around the world.

Finding illustrations by the younger Katsushika proved challenging for Salel, yet he was relentless in his pursuit. Her work is at the Tokyo National Museum and at the Ukiyo-e Ota Memorial Museum of Art, but he wanted to confirm whether the Honolulu Museum had any material lurking in its archives. "I felt very confident that I could find one of her books in our own collection," said Salel recently.

Salel scoured the Honolulu Museum of Art's holdings until he came across the Illustrated Handbook for Daily Life for Women, published in 1847--the missing link for his show. The publication date and accompanying illustrations led Salel to conclude that this was an example by his elusive artist. "It was one of those times I felt like I might have made the right career choice," he said.

The book was acquired by the museum in 2003 as part of the 20,000 piece Richard Lane Collection, which includes Japanese, Chinese, and Korean prints, books, and paintings from the Edo Period (1615-1868). 

Salel's manga exhibition is slated for 2021--plenty of time to continue sleuthing for more forgotten treasures.

Was Marilyn Monroe the praying type? The blonde bombshell converted to Judaism in 1956, hours before the July 1 wedding ceremony uniting her with playwright Arthur Miller (they had married in a courthouse two days prior). Under the direction of Rabbi Robert E. Goldburg, Monroe had been studying the faith for months in preparation for her conversion. This book, The Form of Daily Prayers, According to the custom of the German and Polish Jews (1922), was her "somewhat worn" personal copy that contains a "few notations in the text in pencil, apparently in her hand," according to Doyle, which will offer the book at auction on November 7. It last sold at Christie's in 1999 within the 'Personal Property of Marilyn Monroe' sale alongside other books from her library and retains a book label from that auction. It is expected to make $4,000-6,000 this time around.

Image courtesy of Doyle