Hunting the elusive bookbinder
That’s All She Wrote In 1941 Hannah Dustin French of the Wellesley College Library published an essay entitled “Early American Bookbinding by Hand.” In the essay, she makes mention of American’s first bookbinder: Bookbinding was one of the very early crafts to be practiced in this country, but where the
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED: Book Curses (And Cursed Books)
Christ’s curse upon the crook Who takes away this book.* Until relatively recently in human history, books and documents were valued both for their contents and for the prodigious effort involved in their creation. Book production in a pre-computer age required a high level of literacy, as well as many
Spellbinding: Works of Magic in Fantasy Literature
They bought Harry’s school books in a shop called Flourish and Blotts where the shelves were stacked to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather; books the size of postage stamps in covers of silk; books full of peculiar symbols and a few books with
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.