This is so cool -- the 1715 catalogue of Dillingen-based printer & publisher Johann Caspar Bencard (1649-1720), providing the titlepage for each book, sorted by language (Latin > German) and format (folio > quarto > etc.)! 😻 Are there more examples like this? 🧐 < books.google.de/books?id=NYV...

Are these by any chance ... Eleph🐘-🐜ants? 🤭 < 1499 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili @ books.google.de/books?id=lJs...

Cheerful daydream drawing of a bookshop, made a few years ago but just found in my office. The play happening in front of it does feel on the level at which my colleagues and I sometimes interact.

Pasta-making. I have been helping feed the machine.

Off to the London Library for pick-up and return. This is what I am taking back (used for an old cataloguing project). A private lending library that can offer books like this to borrow is pretty amazing.

Voluminous or velluminous?

Miffy bauble on our tree. Immediately tangible result of my last work trip. #ilovemiffy !!

Very nice last day of shopping for work in 2025, vendor kindly gave me a doggy coaster to take home.

Sancho auditioning for Scrooge.

Here we go. #bookhunt

Window at North Kensington Public Library.

Story here: ewtnvatican.com/articles/st-...

Really impressive cultural offer at San Francisco airport: aviation museum and library, exhibition, sculptures and artwork.

The people in the booth next to me where I am eating are discussing Belle da Costa Greene!

On an American business trip, really loving the Christmas trees here.

It’s the feast day of the Immaculate Conception! Here’s a booklet showing how some students and academics were celebrating it in Zaragoza in 1744.

Winged head of a cherub, Lima 1781.

Luscious pomegranate vignette. Found on a title-page of a book of Milan, 1730.

Ploughing through Palau (irresistible pun). 9 vols of the ‘Manual del librero hispano-americano’ on a desk at the @britishlibrary.bsky.social

Angus O’Neill and I are looking forward to giving ours on the contemporary rare book trade. And we have distinguished guest speakers and off-site visits!

“SCRIVE”. Write! St. Alonso de Orozco (1500-1591) receiving his instructions.

My book on the collections of Francis Douce (1757-1834) was published yesterday. It has been a long time in the making, but I've loved every minute working on such incredible material. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Our special wrapper design comes in green and cream.

28 Days Later. (28 days is exactly how long it took FedEx to get this parcel across the Irish Sea to me - via other places!)

Some very good birds. Madrid, Tomás Junta, 1622.

Broadside Borders: Bologna & Barcelona.

Getting to know a mythical Burgundian heroine called Ambiorixenes.

Q for Quite a nice factotum initial (initial with space at the centre so that the letter can be swapped out). Nuremberg, 1618.

New one to me (very happy to see it) - Aristotelian physics lecture notes following medieval philosopher Duns Scotus (Zaragoza 1744) - bound after an academic festival publication from the same place, with songs to the Virgin Mary.

This lion destroys books. Augsburg, c1750. (This is St Jerome’s lion).

Art history A-level is extinct in Scotland and Wales and nearly extinct in England. The UK has the third-biggest art market in the world ($11bn-ish), if you need a business case to prove its value.

Funky babies. Madrid, 1738.

I love early modern exercise books. They are the basic components of many bound manuscripts, which contain these fascicles bound together. But they also remained solo like here, and I love an exercise book which contains prophesies of Nostradamus and St Bridget.

We’re in shape.

Don’t forget your obligations to the confraternity! Ephemeral placemarker.

Not quite sure yet what this creature on a book spine is.

3:30pm today. Winter gloom has its own attractions.

I’m guessing this is L for Laus (praise). If I had art skills and could design a contemporary initials series that I was happy to subsequently look at, I might make an L for Loser.

Some typographical decoration to bring an end to the page - and the week.

When I say I want to be like Shakespeare, I mean I want to be able to afford a modest lodging in Borough and Bankside.

Celebrating some business success north London style. indiebeer, Holloway Road.

Saved by folding. These printed side notes extend beyond the point to which the binder was trimming the margins.

If you’re in Venice next week, my wife Marta Cacho Casal is giving a plenary paper on Tuesday at a conference on Aristotle and verisimilitude in the Spanish Golden Age. Her paper is on Velazquez’s still lives. ¡Estoy muy orgulloso!

His namesake grandpa was murdered – because he was mistreating the serfs of his estate in Aragon… – and his book about orthography was printed with a typo. Poor D. Juan de Palafox!

“Apuntamientos de otorgrafia”. Typo in the Spanish word for correct spelling (ortografia) in this early C18 publisher’s ad.

Pleased to have the poems of Teresa Guerra from Madrid c1725. While Spanish authors who were nuns are always very interesting, it is also extremely interesting that Guerra wasn’t one.

If anybody would like to, or knows anybody who might like to, do a small amount of paid research work for me at the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh, I would be very glad to hear from them.

Valuable parcel appears lost on the European customs border - if there was no such border with the UK there would be less losing (harrumph). Had grumpier, more anti-Brexity things to say about it earlier in the day, though still very annoyed.

Definitely walking towards the finishing line of some admin chores, but next week should see me I hope trotting along again (with some interesting cataloguing).

Mad Victorian facade of the Holloway Road in north London. Seven different external window frame designs.