"There's a party Don't you know today there is a party Open up your heart, we're gonna start it" (DJ Bobo)

A book that survived fire – by losing its first page. The Brest Bible (1563) is one of the most remarkable witnesses of the Reformation in Lithuania. Printed in Brest (Brasta), it was the first full Bible translation in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into a vernacular language – Polish.🧵

1611 #OfficinaPlantiniana Missal, St Casimir section: an owner literally added in a missing prayer (Oratio in Translatione S. Casimiri). Early modern “add-on content –for #Lithuania ‘s only canonised saint.

That missal once belonged to Sigismund III Vasa – King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. History, hiding in plain sight. Currently held at the Uppsala University Library

Turns out the priest of the Church of St Joseph & Nicodemus in #Vilnius was not just keeping death records – he was also expressing himself artistically in the margins. 🧟‍♂️

Sixteenth-century book with a perfectly placed burn hole. Proof that early modern readers lived dangerously (hello, candles). 📚🔥 #RareBooks #BookHistory #MaterialCulture #LibrarianLife

On 7 May 1697, fire destroyed most of Stockholm’s Tre Kronor Palace. The blaze spread fast through wooden interiors and copper roofing. Evacuation followed; servants tried to save royal possessions. That is how Bleau’s atlas and a drinking glass survived the fire!

Hello sir! How to kill some time while reading. #rarebooks #doodle #earlymodern

Arbor Consanguinitatis (Tree of Consanguinity) from a 1509 edition of the Sexti libri materia, printed in Paris. Clerics used these complex "trees" to map out prohibited degrees of relationship. If your family branches crossed here, a marriage was legally considered incestuous.

Not even the Pope escapes the gloves-on brigade 😄 First comment on the reel where he’s flipping through the Borso d’Este Bible: “No gloves for the Pope?”

Booked for the Evening? Tonight we'll premier my favorite new acquisition, a 17th c. surveying manuscript with a Galileo link! My Conservation colleagues will explain the plan to deacidify and support areas with iron gall ink damage... It's not too late to join us! www.newberry.org/calendar/boo...

While fighting −25 °C in #Lithuania, it feels oddly perfect to accidentally stumble upon #Seehunds 🦭 in a book about Japan. Wilhelm Heine. Reise um die Erde nach Japan. Leipzig, 1856 #earlymodern #rarebooks #specialcollections

Petrus Ekerman (1697–1783) pushed the #Uppsala system to its limits – writing ~600 master’s dissertations for pay. Ready-made theses, sold to students. The profits even built Ekerman’s House in Uppsala. 📚💸 #CarolinaRediviva #UppsalaUniversityLibrary #earlymodern

#Sunny days require shiny #books!

#NewYearResolutions | 1912 1. To wake up no later than 6 a.m. 2. 30-45 min to cultivate Lithuania culture 3. 45 min to read aloud in English 4. To walk outdoors for 1 hour 5. To reserve 1 hour per week for the art of rhetoric, writing or translation. May constancy triumph over distraction!

Dominican #censorship Fun fact: in the Bibliotheca Casanatense, book theft didn’t just get you in trouble—it got you excommunicated on the spot. (At least that’s the warning that was hung up at the library) #earlymodern #bookhistory

A masterpiece of early natural history 🦋✨ Scilla’s 1715 butterfly manuscript, Italy’s first Lepidoptera collection, pairs meticulous watercolours with 211 specimens preserved between mica “windows” — centuries before modern plastics. Kept at Biblioteca Casanatense,

This fencing manual - written between 1482–1487 and dedicated to Guidobaldo da Montefeltro - once sat in the Ducal Library of Urbino. Influenced by Fiore dei Liberi, cited in the ducal index, lost after Cesare Borgia’s 1502 conquest, resurfaced centuries later at the National Central Library of Rome

Books in paintings at the Bernini Palace in Rome: from Erasmus’s scissors to the delicate metal bookmarks of Mary.

Resistance in the 18th c. could look like this. At first glance, this coat of arms seems unmistakably Russian – a double-headed eagle with St George in the centre. But LOOK closer. One head is scraped off, and in the centre you find #Vytis, the #Lithuanian coat of arms, quietly reclaiming its place.

Vt Cases CorpVs præDa beaVIt aMor. Early modern authors: “Here, decode my feelings and my calendar.” Me: sir this is a title page. Is it 1716, though? #earlymodern #chronigram #handwritten #manuscript

Monday mood: quietly losing my mind over UMARC fields and 35th sermon— all in the name of research 🪄📚

“The enemy is at the walls; we are barely holding out. If you do not come, we are all lost.” From a textbook used by students of the Vilnius Diocesan Seminary. #NationalLibraryofLithuania #earlymodern #manuscript

📢 #CFP is open! Join us in Vilnius for the international conference “Scattered, Tracked, Connected: New Approaches to Dispersed Heritage” - exploring innovative ways to trace, interpret, and connect fragmented cultural collections. 🔗 lnm.lt/en/events/in... #heritage #archives #museums #GLAM

✨ Acutus et Argutus: Early Modern Print Culture in Motion has finally happened! Three days of brilliant talks, sharp ideas, and lively discussions on early modern books, poetics & print networks — with speakers from across Europe. #bookhistory #PrintCulture #earlymodern

Acutus et argutus has begun! Why to type something easily, when you can do labirynths, roses. Should my next paper look like that? 🫢

Love... Or Death? #Plague or #TooPerilous 3/3

Believe it or not, this is a parish register from the seventeenth century that was damaged during a fire! 🔥 Heat causes the collagen fibres in the parchment to denature and shrink and eventually turn to gelatine, which sometimes has a ‘glassy’ appearance. #EarlyModern #Skystorians

#BalticWay was a call for #freedom! On August 23, 1989, 2 million people joined hands across #Lithuania, #Latvia, and #Estonia to mark the 50th anniversary of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, when the USSR and Nazi Germany secretly divided Europe into spheres of influence. lithuania.lt/news/life-an...

All sorts of activities happeningnin this teeny tiny vignette. #oldbooks #rarebooks #fishing #swimming #bridges #NationalLibraryOfLithuania

Annotation? No thanks, I’ll draw my feelings instead. What mood would you doodle today? #rarebooks #earlymodernbook #NationalLibraryOfLithuania #doodle

A little bit of a personal touch left behind. De censuris Ecclesiasticis tractatus. Leiden, 1608 #NationalLibraryOfLithuanis #earlymodern #printculture

That one person in the pool 🔫💦 @Kunsthistoriches Museum Vienna #earlymodern #printculture

This is DAMN good BibComm 🔥

To open an exhibition is a celebration in itself. But to have a President Dalia Grybauskaitė as a patron of exhibition and give her a personal guided tour is huge honor! Queens, Realms and Emotions open till 4 January, 2025. #NationalMuseumOfLithuania, House of Histories #Lithuania

Falcon in its natural habitat. 🦅 It’s always nice to see exhibition come to life! 📖Les délices des la natura, Nürnberg, 1774 🪶Falco cherrug 🖼️ Tapestry with hunting scene Quenns, Realms and Emotions from June 4th at the #NationalMuseumofLithuania

What a week! #REFORC2025 has ended, and it was a blast. I had the opportunity to discuss a Lithuanian text published in London to raise aid for Reformed churches in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania devastated by the Deluge. #NationalMuseumOfLithuania #rarebooks #specialcollections @reforc.bsky.social

Accesibility done right at the academic conference! #Reforc2025

Three books. Three bullets. These volumes—once part of a peaceful library—were struck and torn apart by gunfire in #Vienna in 1940s. A haunting reminder of how even cultural heritage aren’t spared from violence. #WienMuseum

National Library of Viena, is that a new encryption method?! Can someone crack the code? Anyway, a solid warp-up for #reforc2025 @reforc.bsky.social

Meeting of Lithuanian special collections curators: discussing security in the face of geopolitics, crises, and thefts. How can we protect our heritage while staying as open and accessible as possible? #CulturalHeritage #security #Lithuania #specialcollections

The #CFP has been extended! You can still submit your proposals for the conference until May 15. Perhaps you’ll help us uncover just how much wit and sharpness it took to write, publish, illustrate, or collect books. More: konferencijos.lnb.lt/acutus-et-ar...

F G D - some of the ornamental letters from Apoftemmi di Plutarcho (Venezia, 1566). It always fascinates me, what was the creative process while making them. #NationalMuseumOfLithuania #earlymodern #rarebooks

Knee protection in 1511. 🦁

It is actually a funny story, we were just playing cards, and suddenly it started to rain, and then, bloody hell, a devil appeared... _____ Say hello to an #earlymodern news pamphlet with a strange story that needed to be sung: www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/details/b... #NewsHistory it is.

A perfect start to my time in Purdue University Archives and Special Collections: a little binding fragment!!! This strip of parchment comes from beautiful 12th-century missal with the Secreta visible on this line "Suscipe domine munera que pro filii tui" 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍 #medievalsky #medievalmss

When You want to ‘economize the text.’ So you do. Into curls, shadows, and powdered wigs. The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, London,1717 #NationalMuseumOfLithuania #earlymodern #rarebooks #specialcollections

VERY Pleased To Meet You... Browsed into these two in a book from 1527 recently, thought they'd come in handy! #InternationalMermaidDay #NewberryLibrary #OFMD #OurFlagMeansBook

The Monster of #Cracow: a deformed child, supposadly, born in 1543 or 1547, said to have dogs’ heads on elbows, chest, and knees. It lived 4 hours and died crying “Watch, the Lord Cometh.” Sebastian Münster, Cosmographey, Basel, 1588 #NationalMuseumOfLithuania #earlymodern #rarebooks #Poland

New week, here we go. #academicchatter