#Rare collection of books

[californiastatelibrary]

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Spines galore this week! Here are some highlights from our collection of Roman and Canon law. We love looking for repurposed manuscript pieces and these swirly hand-drawn flowers!

[uispeccoll]

#MiniatureMonday

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

Check out this tiny tragedy, printed in Glasgow in 1904. This edition of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is bound in red leather, with marbled end pages, and bears the playwright’s coat of arms on the front cover.

Smith Miniatures Collection PR2831.A2 B53 1904 

Gift of Carol Kapell in Memory of Pauline B. Deems

---Anne M.

[muspeccoll]

640-year-old fly, anyone?

We're not sure how long this fly has been in this 14th-century notary's notebook, but it was a favorite among the students who spotted it in class a few weeks ago.

La Turade, Bernard de. [Notarial Registry]. 1383-1393. VAULT DC95.A2 N6 1383

[lionofchaeronea]

A spider on its web. Woodcut illustration from a 1547 edition of the natural history encyclopedia Hortus Sanitatis (Garden of Health), originally published in 1491. Photo credit: Wellcome Images/Wellcome Trust.

[othmeralia]

This beautiful set is Dictionnaire de chymie (1779).

[laurapetrie]

She seemed to have strayed out of a fairy tale. Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy's Wedding (1955)

[skunkes]

As someone interested in book making and a viewer of said content the most frustrating thing is seeing someone rebind a popular book and the comments are like "my heart ripped in half when you tore out the pages why are u mutilating the book :(((((" like girl this isnt an ancient manuscript with only one of its kind in existence its mass manufactured tiktok slop even if it WAS being shredded it wouldnt matter there's so many copies out there. Very weird subset of people

[conservethis]

Spent way too much time yesterday trying to figure out if this book’s cover was real ivory or fake ivory (ie celluloid). The time period it was made (1890s) lands it smack in the middle of when both could be equally possible options. I have a known celluloid photograph album to compare it to, but nothing made of real ivory so at this time I am still on the fence about its veracity…

But dang I love the gilded gauffered edges and clasps!

[eucanthos]

Christopher Wool  (US, 1955)

Black Book, 1989 17 offset lithographs, page (each): 57 x 40 cm Publisher Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Thea Westreich, New York. Printer Karen Davidson, New York. Edition 350

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/christopher-wool-black-book-43

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/10397

[hdslibrary]

Enjoy a Friday afternoon peek into our special collections stacks. Have a great weekend, all!

[californiastatelibrary]

"Okay how does it smell?" — the best question to be asked in a special collections library.

Last week, we welcomed Professor Rodriguez's HIST331 The High Middle Ages class. They got to interact with Medieval and Renaissance books from our rare book collection!

[riesenfeldcenter]

A mixed bag of letters and animals (featuring a couple of dragons!) from a beautiful 1525 book of Canon law. Someone please make these decorated initials into Bananagrams tiles.

[uispeccoll]

#MiniatureMonday #TinyTuesday

Olympic stamps / [edited by Kazimir Rapoša ; text by Tomaž Zajc ; translated by Martin Cregeen].

In honor of the upcoming summer Olympics, we here at Special Collections and Archives thought it would be fun to take a look back at previous Olympics through the miniature book Olympic Stamps! This book contains Olympic stamps dating all the way back to the 1800s.

Spanning many countries, including Finland, Mexico, and of course Greece. These stamps perfectly encapsulate their hosted summer or winter Olympics.

So take a look at these awesome stamps and get excited for the upcoming events (and hopefully a new, amazing stamp)!

-- Adair J

[muspeccoll]

#WordyWednesday

Tree calf: A binding style, popular from the 1770s until the late 1920s, where calfskin leather would be treated with chemicals (ferrous sulfate and potassium carbonate) to form a distinctive branching pattern like a tree or a tree trunk. The result is pretty but also risky: if the leather was not thoroughly washed once the pattern had been burned into it, the ferrous sulfate would continue to eat into the leather until it was eventually ruined.

[garadinervi]

Thomas Eakins (photograph), Walt Whitman, April 1877 [Walt Whitman Collection, Yale University Library, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, CT]