The Mirror of Marriage

Have you ever wondered what advice to give young people about to get married? In the second half of the sixteenth century, the book market abounded with guidebooks about how to live – how to travel, how to write about travel, how to be a prince, how to be a

Continue reading

Baby’s Kingdom

Earlier this year, the American Bookbinders Museum received the generous donation of the Kathleen V. Roberts Collection of Decorated Publishers’ Bindings, comprising more than 400 volumes dating between 1830 and 1950. As of this blog post, about two thirds of the collection has been cataloged.

Continue reading

A “New and More Perfect” Conservation Lab

Benjamin Franklin wrote his own epitaph as a youth while working as a printer’s “devil” (apprentice.) We’ve paid homage to this clever metaphor before, but it is worth repeating.

Continue reading

The Cottonian Library Fire

The British Library is, by number of items cataloged, the largest library in the world, and is the national library of the United Kingdom. In 1973, it was established as an entity separate from the British Museum, and the bulk of its founding collections were taken from the museum’s holdings.

Continue reading

Explore the Prelinger Library

Take a look at this interesting article on our friends Megan and Rick Prelinger and their incredible collection of random discoveries. Discover their story here

Continue reading

Preservationist Restores a Chapter of Virginia’s Colonial Past

An interesting article that briefly outlines the process that a rare book conservator is taking in the restoration of a rare 2 volume botanical guide.  The guide  “Figures of the Most Beautiful, Useful Plants Described in the Gardener’s Dictionary,” written by Philip Miller and published in 1760, is part of the University

Continue reading