Rare books, manuscripts, music, ephemera…
9th September 2020
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Notgeld. Everyone knows, or thinks they know, the catastrophic German hyperinflation of the early 1920s, thanks to photographs of people pushing wheelbarrows full of money, or burning bundles of worthless banknotes as fuel. But there was another pecuniary phenomenon to come out of those years: Notgeld, or ‘emergency […]
Read more
8th November 2016
I was looking for something election-related for today’s blogpost. I wrote about a couple of very nice items connected to the Russian 1906 (parliamentary) election a few years ago, but I don’t think I’ve shared this before: It’s a merciless (and rather bloodthirsty) satire of the Radical-Socialist Édouard Herriot and the Cartel des gauches during […]
Read more
20th June 2012
Annie Besant’s The Riddle of Life (1911) here receives ‘oriental’ treatment from a German book designer, and a patent binding. The German version came out in three editions: ‘Ausgabe A’ (i.e. this one), printed on better quality paper, and bound in dark brown wrappers; ‘Ausgabe B’, on Japanese paper and bound in marbled blue wrappers; ‘Ausgabe C’, […]
Read more