Just found out about this amazing example of #manuscript #recycling . The whole manuscript is made up from the margins of an earlier liturgical manuscript, cut out and rearranged (hence the unusual format), the (mostly) blank margins then used to copy various magical texts in the mid 16th century.

Loved this movie.

Right, 'Evelyn's daughter' went on a big American late night show and talked about the Warburg and Renaissance research. So early modern studies are saved, right? RIGHT? We've got impact now and are cool again? (It *is* the most incredible place in the world.)

I love hand-made manuscript pamphlets, even when the contents are taken from printed books. Examining my purchases at the Chelsea book fair.

“The Tory Notion of Peace & Goodwill. The government’s record abroad 1895-1900”. “Wars & massacres are coloured red”. 1900 election poster, seen at Timothy Millett @ the LAPADA fair. I believe he has sold it.

Typographical decoration, Madrid, c.1732.

Hippocrates in a coat embroidered with plants. Valencia, 1742.

Good to go at the good old Chelsea book fair.

Time, money and education. leocadogan.com/Chelsea25

Dining room tables are for measuring things.

Contents of a parcel of Spanish books that has just arrived. There is simply no such thing as too much vellum.

I’ve photographed it before, but this finger still tickles me.

Today on the blog: a magnificent find by @franceswolfreston.bsky.social of a book that the poet Katherine Philips gave to Mary Jeffreys; a discussion with important scholarly implications for the study of Philips earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/2025/10/27/h... #EarlyModern #HerBook

Some French red goatskin from a princess’s library is coming to Chelsea …

Correction, Anna Sophia of Hesse-Darmstadt (1638-1683), who was Princess-Abbess Anna Sophia II. (NOT Anna Maria).

Coins of Anna Maria II, the Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg. Illustration in a broadside of Munich, 1679.

Statutes of a house for Jewish Christian converts (Bologna 1662). The title has left an impression on the inside cover of the cartonnage wrapper.

Almanac spines, Paris 1820s. The tool used on the middle and right seems to be the same (the one on the left is a variant design).

Printer’s collation statement for a 66-leaf duodecimo (12mo.) “ABCDEF. All sheets are complete except for F, which is half a sheet”. 12 x 5 + 6.

Free tickets here! firsts.artsvp.com/84d91f?link=...

Tomorrow’s job will be cataloguing this brocade paper-covered beauty. It’s a late 18th-cent woman’s death inventory so content promises to be interesting too.

Chin up?

Doing the passport renewal where one realises one’s hair is no longer brown 👨‍🦳

Getting ready for this!

Pinksky

C for cavallo (horse). Woodcut capital used in a book of Verona (Girolamo Discepolo), 1592.

Really sad to see Catalogue of the Goldsmiths Library of Economic Literature removed from open shelves at the @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This happened also with Sabin ‘Bibliotheca Americana’ a few years ago.

Porphyrian Pelican. A bird in a printed logical diagram.

Porphyrian Pelican. A bird in a printed logical diagram.

I like books with leaves whose dimensions don’t always meet the full size of the text block. In this case a post-incunable (1508).

Sorry that shouldn’t say “pizza”, but “piazza”. Maybe when the editor drew up this corrections list, they said “che pizza” (what a bore).

Deeply flawed person, still surprises. Picasso, ‘Portrait of a woman after Cranach the younger’. Linocut on paper, 1958. Tate Modern Picasso show.

Spanish comics. LHS: a mid-C19 “auca” print from Barcelona. RHS: Picasso, ‘The Dream and Lie of Franco I and II’ (etching and aquatint on paper, 1937). The latter is presently on show at Tate Modern.

Boo!

The reverse sides (versos) of folded 17th-cent broadsides.

A clear-eyed and modern-dressed Pythagoras, in a volume of student philosophy notes of Caen, 1700.

Experimenting on my laptop with the Flashes app (for viewing and posting images on Bluesky), here is a photo of an old and sold piece of stock (a hand-written Italian veterinary manual from the eighteenth century).

How to become a printer's apprentice in 1743. A boy is led by Carmenta, a Roman goddess who created the alphabet, up steps of a temple where the goddess Typographia awaits. Each step represents a skill that must be mastered, such as reading, writing, foreign languages, declensions, conjugation. 1/2

Well-researched article including opinion from our colleague in the book trade Pierre-Yves Guillemet. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...

22 Portobello Road, London. c60 years before it became so (in 1927 apparently), George Orwell was living in some serious property.

Decoration on a broadside from Barcelona 1682.

Annotated to-do list.

Just followed my child’s favourite crime writer @redbreastedbird.bsky.social so that I can keep up-to-date on news to relay. Seems a jolly feed too!

Yarn-saving Sunday.

Repurposed shoe box full of bibliographical goodies, ready for wrapping.

c.1600 doodles on the front cover of a book.

Trying to bring a bit of Spain to north London. #aperitivo

Happy arrival. Pamphlet in cartonnage with presentation inscription (1730) on front.

You write of this book being ‘rare’, And price it to make me despair— Yet right here I see, In ESTC, Some ninety-six copies to spare!

Just sent to me by @sianwitherden.bsky.social who did some great work for me on this. So pleased to see this Jacobite roll so happily settled. www.ilovelimerick.ie/rare-jacobit...