ABC 1818

As a medieval scholar, I confess to having often thought that the world of printed books was one where the discoveries had all been made: that there were, of course, rare printed books, but that bibliographers and catalogues must have long ago sorted out what books had been printed, and where, and when.

And yet, in only a few years of working in this business full time, I've surprised myself more than once to find a new imprint, or an unrecorded variant, even among printed American books. I suppose this is because such books have not been well collected--or at least they have not been collected for as many years as older books and incunabula have.

High-German Reformed ABC
(Philadelphia: Zentler, 1818).

My post today involves a recent acquisition that turned out to be a minor and apparently unrecorded variant of a book that was already known.  The book itself is a Pennsylvania German primer or ABC, the mid-Atlantic German equivalent of the New England Primer, perhaps. 

This particular version of this book, from 1818, was printed by Conrad Zentler, "Für Daniel Brautigam." It is, I was glad to find, a fairly scarce imprint: WorldCat appears to record only three copies of this particular edition in institutional collections.

A closer look at the WorldCat entry, however gave me pause: the online bibliography describes the book as having 32 pages, and this copy, in fact, has 36 pages. [In both my book and the WorldCat description, there are no separate end-papers or pastedowns; printed leaves serve as the pastedowns.]

A closer look at the collation--the structure of the folded, printed pages--showed that my book has an additional bifolium at the front of the book--a conclusion that was obvious: when one opens the book up, there are two fine woodcut illustrations, followed by two blank pages (the unprinted verso of the second leaf of my bifolium, and the unprinted first page of the main book, intended to serve as the pastedown). 

Initial Bifolium; rooster on left, Luther on right.

From the outside, this little book is pretty unassuming. Inside, it is, I think, utterly charming, even if my German isn't quite as good as it ought to be.

For whatever reason, my copy of this book has these added illustrations and text; why it includes these two extra leaves can probably not be determined with any certainty, almost 200 years later now. But what fun to learn about it! And what a fine reminder that even the homeliest covers might hide something rare and unique. What else are books for?

From the outside.

Finding

A Centennial Display

A friend who is also self-employed describes his work as "finding, minding, and grinding." For me, finding books is where the real delight in the business is. Minding the (virtual) store and taking care of business is something I can face with equanimity. And yet there are grinding elements, too: the tedium of chores and repetitious labor.

But finding! That's where all of the mystery and excitement lies. When I am looking on-line for things to buy, I am, for the most part, looking: hoping and expecting to find something I can use (i.e., sell), even if I don't yet know what it is. But now and then, when I am out at a bookstore, or an antique mall, or an antique auction, I have the pleasure of truly finding something: discovering something I didn't even know I wanted, something I didn't even know existed.

So last week, at an Ohio auction I frequent, I found this little

Front Cover

paperback book in a box full of books, and I was happy to be able to purchase the whole box. From the outside, there's not much to be seen: the gilded printing on the front is almost entirely worn away, but I could (barely) read "Knickerbocker 1878" and "Descriptive Price List," and that was enough for me to know I should look inside.

The first inside page showed a fine engraving of the "Workshops of the Knickerbocker Ice Company," and I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. The picture was fine, in its own way, and such engravings of factories are commonplace in these kinds of catalogues. But when one looks at a Victorian trade catalogue, one hopes to see beautiful images of wares to be offered for sale, and I didn't have much hope of having discovered a catalogue full of beautiful pictures of chunks of ice. 

First page of the Catalogue

I was pleasantly surprised, however, to see that the Knickerbocker Company seemed to be engaged in selling virtually everything that was used at every level in the Victorian ice trade, from curry combs to brush the horses that pull the carts that move the ice to the carts themselves. As one can see from the image at the top of the post, just two years before this catalogue, they had had a display at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition.

One of the Levy-type colored plates.

So I kept flipping, and I was delighted to discover seven plates of exemplary ice carts that the Knickerbocker Ice Company had built and shipped to various customers: these plates are printed in multiple colors by the (then-new) "Levy-type" photochemical engraving process. These colored plates are very charming, and  still very striking. And this one does indeed include a picture of a chunk of ice. 

Sometimes the things we don't expect to see are just what we find, but in ways we never expect. And there's always something new to find--even in old books.

Micro-Catalogue of Manuscripts

Ca. 1845 French textbook for
readingmanuscript writing.

After an exceptionally busy May, I've found it hard to do much in June, either. But I have been able to pull together a tiny little list of eight items in the general category of Manuscripts, with two bonus items. 

The eight manuscripts include only two fragments, with the rest being (more or less) complete in themselves, and they span in date from 1210 to the 1750s. 

The bonus items are school books from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, intended to teach the skill of reading manuscript writing to students.

The earlier, French example appears to take the task even more seriously, and the dozens of examples of script are seemingly arranged in increasing degrees of difficulty: the student who makes it through the entire book, presumably, will be able to read any of the difficult scripts that life in 19th-century France could throw at one. 

Intriguingly, this little French schoolbook also includes an example of handwriting that seems to be explicitly derived from late medieval Gothic script: though I've encountered more than one nineteenth-century French manuscript that was intended to look like a Gothic manuscript, I ever expected that such writing might have been current, to the point of being taught in schools.

Mini-Catalogue 174: Mostly Fragments and Leaves

It was interesting over the past several weeks to see news stories crossing my Facebook-desk about recent discoveries in the field of incunabula fragments: a fragment of the Gutenberg bible still in place as a binding wrapper and a new Caxton leaf. 

Just as I pick up medieval manuscript binding fragments when I can, I also pick up recycled incunabula fragments when I can, though I've never found a Caxton or Gutenberg leaf--and perhaps I never shall. 

But among my recent acquisitions have been a number of interesting recycled fragments, both manuscript and print, and my new little mini-catalogue 174 describes them in some detail. 

4 early English printed leaves, 1530-ca. 1553. Note the
acidic paper frames on the two rightmost leaves, and the
remains of a similar frame on the second leaf. These frames
are evidence of long association of these leaves.

Readers will see, also, that I've included some early printed leaves that show no clear sign of having been recycled in bindings: like medieval manuscripts, early printed books were (and sometimes still are) often enough cut up for the market. I generally try to steer clear of such items, but now and again, I come across some leaves that were probably dispersed the better part of a century ago. It seems to me that such leaves should not be spurned: they, too, sometimes have something important to tell us about the history of books. 

One lot in the catalogue involves a big lot of twenty such leaves, which seem to have travelled together for a long time now. Another lot includes two leaves, probably from the same English book, that I have been able to bring back together.

Such leaves are out there: it is our task to do good for them, when we can.

Back from the 'Zoo (and a Recent Acquisition)

I had a long weekend at the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, where I got to feel like both an academic and a bookseller, all at the same time. I saw old friends and met some new folks, and made a few sales. It was just what I wanted from the Congress.

Tiny little leather-bound book. 

Oh, and I want to the dance, and I did not dance.

Arriving back home, I had no fewer than four packages in the mail waiting for me. With a little concentration, I finally remembered what three of them were before I opened them up, but one didn't ring any bells. A week out of the house, and I can't remember what I spent money on a week before.

Rather than a package shaped like a book, this was a small cardboard box, the kind of thing I'd ship a glass toothpick holder or salt shaker in. I had no idea what was in it.

When I opened it up, of course, I found a tiny little book. 

I measure the height of this book to be 3 9/16". According to the website of the Miniature Book Society, American collectors would find this too large to be counted as a true miniature book, although European collectors, apparently, would consider it a miniature: their defining size appears to be ten centimeters.

Regardless, it is, I am certain, the smallest manuscript I've had the pleasure to own.

Inside, there are 252 numbered paper pages, although the scribe seems to have finished his or her work on page 203. It seems to be a book of private devotion, written entirely in Latin, and probably deriving from Bohemia, as the reference on the first page to "S Johannes Nepomuc[eni]" about half way down the page perhaps suggests. 

Most written pages seem to have between 17 and 19 lines of writing; that's about 6 lines of writing per inch. Even so, the script is generally clear and legible, and the book as a whole probably dates from sometime in the 1700s. 

A book this size, it seems to me, is a very personal item: although neither the scribe nor owner (if they weren't in fact the same person) seems to have left a name for us to find, but the contents and the size together, somehow, give us a sense of a real human being. 

Miniature it may be, but of greater importance or significance, it somehow seems, for all that: it feels like it tells us something about its early life in a way a larger size book would not. 

What a delight it was to pull such a little gem from a box when I came back home.

Off to the 'Zoo (Kalamazoo, that is!)

Every May, medievalists gather for the big Medieval Congress at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It is an academic conference, primarily, and I always love to go, since I have a lot of friends I sometimes only get to see at Kalamazoo.

A small charter from 1210

In recent years, I've also set up a booth in the book room, where I've tried to offer a selection of medieval materials of interest to individuals and sometimes even institutions trying to build or strengthen their teaching collections. 

It's a lot of fun, trying to find good homes for wonderful items, and for me at least, it's always been a great thrill to own medieval materials. I have always been fascinated with old books and manuscripts--all old things, really--and there is no substitute for holding something in your hands, and even owning it, to help you learn about it and learn from it.

It also makes me feel personally involved in helping to pass these things along to future generations: and it's something anyone can do. It's a reminder that we are all, always, in a position to help transmit our cultural treasures to the future: this is not work for libraries and museums only. 

Of course, some medieval manuscripts are very expensive, but there are many college textbooks that cost more these days than some medieval manuscript or printed incunabula fragments. It's an interesting statement about how academics (and others) value books, both old and new. 

My image here shows one item that I'll be taking to Kalamazoo, a new acquisition, it is a cute little charter from France, written in 1210. I think it's the oldest charter I've been fortunate to have, and while I'd love to find a good home for it, I certainly wouldn't mind hanging onto it for a while myself, either.

If any of my readers out there are medievalists going to Kalamazoo, I very much hope you'll stop by my booth in the book room!

Eastern National Antiques Show, Carlisle, PA, May 5-6

The truck is all loaded up with boxes again for the Eastern National Antiques Show in Carlisle. This is a twice-a-year show with something like sixty years of continuity: one of the oldest and best glass shows in the country, though you can find a few other things there, too: some jewelry, for example, and other things. 

Heisey 4-light candelabrum

But most people bring their glass to sell, and many buyers come for the glass. Since glass is in my blood, I have always dealt a bit in glass, though my real love these days is books, of course (more on that, next week). 

All my newest acquisitions in glass, pretty much, were already boxed up and priced before I got around to working up this blog post: all I had left was the crystal candelabra shown at the left.

This piece was probably made some time before World War II, possibly even in the first quarter of the twentieth century: it's a bit hard to date precisely, and similar pieces (to hold two or three candles) were certainly made into the 1950s. 

But before the war, and again after the war, the dangling prisms that were intended to catch the candlelight and reflect it around on candelabra like this were produced by the millions in Bohemia, then imported and re-sold by American manufacturers like A H Heisey & Co., who made this candelabrum. For a short time during the war, Heisey tried to make a pressed substitute, when the German/Czech/Bohemian sources were unavailable, but there's no substitute for cut and polished glass.

More recently, here in Morgantown, we were out of power for six or eight hours on Monday night: too bad I didn't have any candles to put in this, or I'd have had no problem reading all evening. 

It could've been an evening of unexpected elegance. But we had no candles, alas.