Rare books, manuscripts, music, ephemera…
17th December 2020
I was recently reminded about the German tradition of the Barbarazweig, and thought I’d share a short Advent piece by Hugo Distler (1908–1942) which I translated some years ago: I first sang it back in December 1995, when I was living in Germany, and found it quite charming. Distler’s work is little known in the […]
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5th November 2020
I am currently cataloguing some new material in preparation for the Boston Virtual Book Fair next week. Here’s one such item: ‘This elaborate house-blessing [which measures 412 × 325 mm], issued in the 1820s by Johann Ritter and Company of Reading … provides a unique poetic blessing rather than the common prose versions and the shorter […]
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24th June 2020
I wrote these back in 2009, when they were premiered by the Damon Singers. The text for the third was one of the readings at our wedding (my wife and I both studied modern languages at university). Having discovered it, I read more of Heine’s work, and found two more poems of his I wanted […]
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20th May 2020
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, […]
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9th April 2020
Another book from the recently-released Anglo-German Cultural Relations catalogue: Albrecht von Haller’s Usong. An Eastern Narrative … (London: Printed for the Translator; and sold by F. Newbery … and J. Walter … 1772). This first edition in English was published only a year after the original had appeared in Germany, apparently at the instigation of Queen Charlotte. ‘This […]
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20th March 2020
This weekend, at least here in the UK, is Mother’s Day, so I thought I would share something we have here in the office: A hand-coloured etching, inscribed at the head ‘An meine liebe Mama 1786’. To paraphrase the printed greeting below, which is on silk (a window has been cut in the etching, and […]
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