This item is still missing as of 5/28/2019. The following item was stolen in Cambridge, MA on 7/28/14: Bocher, Emmanuel. Le Macramé. Technique, Modèles divers, Procédés d'exécution. Paris, Librairie Damascène Morgand, 1919. 441 pp. B./w. ills. Soft cover. Folio. (Manuel des Travaux à L'Aiguille V). *Very rare. If you are offered this item or have any information regarding the book, please contact Nancy Stieber at nancy.stieber@umb.edu or (617) 547-0977. [more Stolen: ‘Le Macramé. Technique, Modèles divers, Procédés d’exécution.’]

In a few days I'll be heading out to Colorado Springs for my fifth tour of duty on the faculty of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar. Hard as it is for me to believe that five years have passed since my first visit to CABS, as a guest lecturer in 2010, harder still must it be for those who were involved with it from the start — wonderful dealers like Ed Glaser and Mike Ginsberg — to realize that CABS has now been a continuously-running institution for almost forty years. In the interim enormous changes have taken place in the book trade, and some pretty big ones have taken place within the seminar, too. But one thing certainly hasn't changed, and that is the Seminar's central mission of providing booksellers, collectors, and librarians of all levels of experience with the most in-depth, intensive introduction to the antiquarian book trade that is currently available. I wrote passionately about my belief in the seminar on my own blog a couple of years ago. I still believe, as I did then, that this week in Colorado is among the best and most exciting things I do in the world of books. The opportunity to open new dealers' eyes to the enormous and ever-expanding range of possibilities this business has to offer is hugely gratifying, and each year I leave the seminar feeling better-informed, re-energized and re-committed to my own business. I also leave tired: it's the most exhausting week of my year, harder even than New York Book Fair week (and that's saying something!), ... [more What My Friends Think I Do: Part III In A Series]

Last Friday PBS NewsHour did a feature on a fine press printing of Walt Whitman's seminal poetry collection Leaves of Grass. The limited edition is being published by Arion Press and produced in the same way the first edition was produced on 1855-- on a movable-type printing press. [more Fine Press Printing of Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’ Released]

The ABAA is delighted to welcome the following new members to the Association: Lawrence O'Shaughnessy of Franklin Books LLC and Teri Osborn of William Reese Company. Read a little more about each member below. Full Member Lawrence O'Shaughnessy, Franklin Books LLC (Oldwick, NJ) Larry O'Shaughnessy established Franklin Books in 2006 after spending over three decades in general management, investment banking, and international consulting. His business is focused on offering books that are truly beautiful as well as being significant literary works. In addition to fine leather bindings, livre d'artiste works, and fine art photography, Larry has been working with artists to create unique fine bindings to take the “livre d'artiste” experience to a new level, and enhance the overall reader experience, by having the externals of a book play as important a role as the art contained within the book. Franklin Books recently opened a gallery in the historic village of Oldwick, New Jersey that showcases a wide assortment of leather bindings, fine art photography, and unique book creations and sculptures that can also be purchased on their internet site. Associate Member Teri Osborn, William Reese Company (New Haven, CT) Teri Osborn has been with the Americana Department at the William Reese Company since December 2008. Prior to that time, she earned her MLS at Indiana University and worked as a rare book librarian at the American Antiquarian Society and the University of Alberta. A n... [more ABAA Welcomes New Members]

Last month I bought three pamphlets about a murder that took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1830. It was a sensational affair in its day, a victory for prosecutor Daniel Webster, and an interesting sidelight in the history of American jurisprudence. But that was not why I bought the pamphlets. In 1829 William Low of Salem was sent to Canton to manage the affairs of Russell & Co. the great American China Trade firm. He brought his wife along and, to keep her company, his twenty-year-old niece, Harriett Low. Happily for posterity, Harriett kept a detailed diary of her years in China. The Low household was a center of social life for American traders in Canton, and Harriett saw, and wrote about, everyone of importance in that group. Her diary was excerpted in Emma Liones's classic book China Trade Post-Bag, and reprinted in its entirety about fifteen years ago as Lights and Shadows in Macao Life. She met Robert Bennett Forbes, AKA “Black Ben,” author of one of the great American autobiographies, his brother John Murray, who would go on to become one of the great commercial minds in American history, and George Chinnery the eccentric and gifted painter (the old lech was sweet on Harriett and painted a lovely portrait of her. I visit it every once in a while at the Peabody Essex Museum), and Robert Morrison, the great missionary and translator, and William Hunter, a young American who went native and penned one of the liveliest accounts of China Trade life. She fell in love ... [more The Novel I Never Wrote]

Demystifying Social Media “Social media” may very well be the single most pervasive yet misunderstood term of the last decade. I would be pointing out the obvious to say that over time, social media has fundamentally changed the way we interact; it has also raised the bar for businesses, altered the way we construct communities and discussion, and given birth to some pretty cryptic lingo (be warned: LOL does not mean Lots Of Love). Furthermore, a bewildering number of social media platforms exist, from the mega-networks like Facebook and LinkedIn to media sites like Youtube and Pinterest, and everything in between. And then there are the endless blogs, and tweets, and apps…oh my! Feeling overwhelmed yet? While I think it is safe to say that most booksellers have a website and use the internet for research, buying, and selling, my sense is that there is some lingering hesitation when it comes to using social media as a tool for business. And no small wonder! How does one even get started, let alone navigate all the interfaces and etiquette required across various websites? More importantly, how does one use this new technology effectively? Social media engagement has become such an important aspect to doing business these days that bigger companies will hire people expressly for the purpose of creating content and monitoring their presence across multiple platforms. While that might be necessary for companies with hundreds or thousands of employees, where does that leave... [more THE SAVVY BOOKSELLER: Social Media for the Antiquarian Book Trade Post #1]

Each year the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) holds a four day Preconference focused on special collections. The location of the conference and the theme change annually; this year the event was held in Las Vegas and explored "space, place, and the artifact in special collections". The conference allows special collections librarians and developers from across the country to socialize and participate in meaningful conversations about the field. In addition to the variety of workshops, seminars, and social events, a main component of the Preconference is the ABAA's Bookseller Showcase (read Greg Gibson's impressions of the 2014 showcase here). The showcase is like a book fair amuse-bouche: there are usually between 30-40 exhibitors who bring a sampling of their inventory, giving attendees a small taste of the type of material they specialize in and what they currently have to offer. Booksellers who participate in the showcase frequently describe it as an invaluable opportunity to meet customers face to face and to forge new relationships with special collections developers. It's worthwhile to note that one does not have to work in special collections to attend the annual Preconfernece. Registration is open to anyone who may want to attend, and many ABAA booksellers have found the Preconference to be a wonderful opportunity to network with librarians and to further educate themselves about the field so they c... [more Viva Las Vegas: 2014 RBMS Preconference and Booksellers’ Showcase]

Printed American broadsides of the 18th and 19th centuries—what we might think of today as “posters”—were an important public means of spreading news and information within a community. A broadside might print a political manifesto, a religious sermon, a military declaration, news of a great battle, or a Presidential proclamation. A broadside might advertise a newly arrived shipment of goods or a new production of a play or circus. Merchants and inventors used broadsides to sell their wares or to attract investors. American broadsides fall under the broader category of historical ephemera—printed items created and intended only for temporary, fleeting use. These ephemeral artifacts documented the beliefs, activities, and concerns of a very specific time and place in American history. Eighteenth and nineteenth century American broadsides were public notices and announcements; mass media in an age where the “worlds” in which men and women lived were much smaller and less connected. From an American broadside circa 1854 printed in Charleston, South Carolina. Illustrated broadsides from 18th and 19th century America are desirable, as are broadsides lettered in color. Unlike a book, a broadside's authorship often was anonymous or obliquely suggested. This broadside from the American Civil War denounces Copperheads, those individuals whom's loyalty to the Union cause was of dubious nature. (Image detail) By the 20th century, printing technologies in America had grown ... [more American Broadsides, History on a Sheet of Paper]

The making of catalogs is on my mind tonight. I just put my own nineteenth catalog to bed — it left for the printer's an hour ago, a massive thing by my standards; over a hundred pages, just shy of two hundred-fifty items, all pictured. Research and cataloguing aside, lots of work goes into a catalog like that. The last two weeks at Lorne Bair Rare Books have been spent frantically photographing, photo-editing, laying-out, and proofreading. None of which I would describe as traditional “booksellerly” vocations — in fact, I'm not sure a single new book has gotten catalogued around here in the interval — but there we are. The New Antiquarian (if I may be so bold) finds himself going to great lengths these days to sell a book. Not that there's anything “new” about rare book catalogs! For a few hundred years they were the standard medium through which antiquarian books were distributed. But then (you've heard this one before) came the internet. Not everyone stopped printing catalogs when on-line bookselling came to prominence, but many did. Those of us who continued putting them out were looked on with a bit of suspicion by some of our more progressive colleagues, as though we weren't quite getting with the program. Now, it seems, there's a bit of a resurgence in printed catalogs — I'm seeing more of them lately, many from dealers new to the scene. Clearly there's something up. I'm not certain exactly how many of my colleagues issue printed catalogues, but I'm cer... [more What My Friends Think I Do: Part II In A Series]

I'm from Maryland and John Waters is my favorite famous hometown boy. (I'm reading his new hitchhiking memoir Carsick now.) I serendipitously met him once at a gallery in P-town and he was just as engaging one-on-one as he is in this video—a recent interview from the LIVE from the NYPL series. Unsurprisingly, Waters is a great story-teller and in it, he talks about his book collection (think counter-culture and LGBT literature with punny titles) and name-checks our friends at Bolerium Books. He also discusses the problems institutions face when collecting material that is no longer "PC" or otherwise considered distasteful. -Susan Benne [more John Waters, Charm City Book Collector]