Apprentices Out of Order

At the turn of 1636, Sir John Lambe was presented with a series of complaints by a group of journeyman printers. Lambe was serving as a member of the Court of High Commission, an ecclesiastical court set up by Queen Elizabeth in 1559, whose duties included some degree of oversight

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Floods and Disasters: 1966 and 2016

Fifty years ago last night, the Arno River in Florence burst its banks and flooded the city, reaching depths of 18-22 feet. Water raged through the streets at some 30-40 miles per hour, tumbling cars and even newsstands as easily as if they were children’s toys. Shops on the famous

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Banned Books Week 2016

Banned Books Week, which takes place this year between September 25 and October 1, is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the freedom to share and express ideas. It draws attention to the problems and harms of censorship.

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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.

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From the ABM Library: A Sky Empty of Orion

What with Iris Law’s survey of chapbooks in her recent guest post for this blog, it seemed only right to feature a chapbook in the American Bookbinders Museum Library as well. A Sky Empty of Orion is the 1985 creation of noted American poet Laura Jensen, and serves as an

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Stacking the Deck: A Playing Card Press

For centuries people have employed “presses” of various types to protect and preserve precious possessions. Victorian women pressed flowers given them by admirers. Linen presses and clothes presses, generally now synonymous with cupboards, originally were devices to flatten fine fabrics via a platen and large screw, not unlike printing presses.

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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.

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Patron Saints of Bookbinding

Bookbinding is not for the timid of hand or heart. courtesy of Dan Goldberg Risk of stab by needle, loss of fingers by guillotine: these are the few perils that bookbinders face every day in their field of work. There is even one recorded case of death by beating books. courtesy of

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Ephemera of the Month: An Introduction to Bookbinders’ Tickets

Few things as brazenly flout their etymological origins as the idea of collected ‘ephemera.’  In Greek, ephemera lasts only a day, and the word was often specifically used in reference to short-lived creatures, like mayflies. Printed ephemera, too, was meant to be transient–one-off or single-use items that were expected to

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The American Bookbinders Museum: A Brief History of the Museum, Library, and Archive

Founder Tim James has been collecting bookbinding material for twenty years, but the initial hunt wasn’t always for a museum. He began the collection with the thought that upon retiring he could move up to the Gold Country, open a 19th century bookbindery, and become the town curmudgeon. Fortunately for

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