She has also been reading Book Finds: How to Find, Buy, and Sell Used and Rare Books, by Ian C. Ellis. I think you know why. And she has passed both of them on to me. As soon as I read them, I will be smarter about books!
The Smithsonian book is gorgeous--white cloth boards, red leather backstrip, red ribbon bookmark--heavy, and comes in a slipcase. It is full of history, images, descriptions, book terms, and those delicious facts and details I love.
Books Finds is full of practical information, Sarah tells me, which will be good, but some of it is geared toward the moneymaking strategies, etc., not all of them pertinent to a vintage bookshop like the one we work in. She skimmed some in that book, as will I.
I took a couple of the Newberry Library courses on bookmaking when I worked there (one of my many and varied book/literature-related jobs when I also worked as a freelance writer and actor). I learned about folding large sheets into signatures and how to marble paper for the endpapers, etc. Wonderful!
The endpaper above is from a Virginia Woolf book that can be had at Persephone Books.
That is a gorgeous endpaper. I didn't know you knew how to marble. How clever of you!
ReplyDeleteBooks are such beautiful things! I have taken some classes at Evanston Print and Paper - making paste paper and letterpress printing - that show just how much of an art it really is to make endpapers and covers.
ReplyDeleteSome of my favorite possessions are old books...
Julie, I didn't make this one, but I did make some at Newberry. Donna, that's cool!
ReplyDeleteI think Julia will do her marbling workshop again for Babbitt's at next summer's Sugar Creek Arts Festival. Come on by!