Tag Archive: 0engraving

With the Boston book fair now behind me, I’ve now got time to focus on cataloguing some recent acquisitions and thought I’d share one with you. This is a rare eighteenth-century perspective view depicting a miniature contemporary library, complete with library users reading, discoursing, or simply admiring the shelves.  Such Guckkastendioramen (or ‘peepshows’ as they […]

I’m currently putting together a new list of 18th-century material, and thought I’d share one item from it here. It’s two etchings of the ‘walking bookseller’, Theodora Grahn, ‘Baron de Verdion’, from 1793 and 1803. These are two versions of the much-reproduced image of Theodora Grahn/de Verdion, an émigré cross-dressing bookseller in Georgian London.  The […]

As many will know, ephemera has been an interest of mine since I set up the business (ten years ago this year!). Recently, I discovered a genre of which I was previously unaware: fancy printed greetings cards from eighteenth-century Germany, using colour and silk. Here is a New Year’s card, the etching printed in blue, […]

Less than a month to go until Firsts: London’s Rare Book Fair, and we find ourselves busily putting together our fair list. This year we have a variety of material we hope you will enjoy, including one of my current favourites: a striking example of copperplate engraving…

Apologies for the recent lack of blog posts.  Things have been so busy: exhibiting at the Boston book fair, processing some recently acquired collections, trying to find someone to come and work for me, and preparing for California.  In cataloguing for the latter, here’s one little item which caught my eye: A small etched and […]

The full caption reads: ‘ ‘This extraordinary young Man was born Dec.r 18. 1769, at Hook, in Hampshire, without Arms or Legs, as here delineated, occasioned as his Mother supposes by a Fright she suffered when pregnant with him.  Notwithstanding these Disadvantages he has by industry acquired the Arts of Writing & Drawing, holding his Pencil […]