Peak earlyish middle age. A friend is playing in a gig but can’t stay out too late as he has to take official notes at a central bank’s interest rate-setting committee the next day.

Beautiful catalogue of Mexican bookplates at @britishlibrary.bsky.social. Doesn’t have what I was looking for, but it’s a tour.

An early book entirely composed of diagrams.

pro-bookbinding tip: following the careful application of beeswax it is vital to keep any newly waxed thread both near at hand and tangle-free

Keir Starmer security detail, Kings Cross (he got out of a car - a metre away from me - and went into the station so quickly that I didn’t manage to photograph the PM himself).

Tengo mas libros españoles.

Little addition to LCRB gear, on the advice of @ebrumfitt.bsky.social. Thermal (label) printer!

England is very funny sometimes. My dog Sancho on his evening walk goes over and has a good sniff of a local drug dealer with a burner phone on a park bench. I apologise for him. The dealer pretty much apologises back. And we then go back to our respective businesses and duties.

Am instructed that there is still time to enter this year's competition. Deadline 30th June.

2025 ABA Book Collecting Prizewinner introduces his collection on atomic physics. Click on icon below for video. www.instagram.com/reel/DYeoweX...

Incomplete book that I bought years ago & brought out just now to look at the binding. The printer Maria de Ribera was sometime co-publisher of Mexico’s first newspaper (La Gaceta) & then sole heir of a C17 family printing firm. See udayton.edu/blogs/Marianlibrary/2024-09-26-mujeres-impresoras.php

He's HOW Old? Celebrated Dürer's birthday (born 1471) today by submitting the final image for our Impressive Textiles book proofs! We needed new photography from the Städel in Frankfurt to do this spectacular engraving on satin justice... I'm thrilled it arrived today of all days! #TeamAlbrecht

I am the prepper.

Embarrassed to say have had to reach for the computer to understand why the cheeering and honking in our vicinity (near Emirates stadium) tonight.

The famous Fanklin. From a work on lightning conductors of Barcelona, 1788.

Mexican bookplate, as yet untraced. #provenance

The very smart bookplate of distinguished architect and art historian Luis Cervera Vera (1914-1998).

Joyful handful of Hispanica, just received.

Performance dates in the back of an opera libretto. Modena, 1741.

In the year 234 of the republican calendar … front cover of joint catalogue from @ebrumfitt.bsky.social, @debscoltham.bsky.social, Amanda Hall and Susanne Schulz-Falster for Firsts London. With the item it draws from.

Mountains of Athens.

All the way from London, it’s “The Caryatids”! (St Pancras photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Incurable optimist in me notes that in these local election results at present, LAB + LD + GRN > REF + CON. Hasn’t been case for most of today.

Super dad. Michaelina Wautier, ‘St. Joseph’ (c1655). Wautier show, Royal Academy.

Learning to read. Michaelina Wautier, ‘The education of the Virgin’ (1656). Wautier show, Royal Academy. Label notes it is signed “invenit et pixit” ie artist also composed it.

Sancho is a good citizen. #dogsatpollingstations

Late-night reading. Learning a lot about my colleagues and their fascinating business histories.

Tedious work of making Spanish export licence applications (buying and cataloguing much more fun!) - entails staring at title-page snaps on my phone (and therefore occasionally posting (details of) them).

Emblems of Spanish C18 academies and societies: with the three wreaths, of the Madrid fine arts academy (Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando), with the tree, of the Zaragoza society for social and economic improvement (Sociedad Económica Aragonesa de Amigos del País).

On Christopher de Hamel and @rosemccandless.bsky.social www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...

Book published 4125 years from now.

Printer’s mark of Jaume Cendrat of Barcelona (d. 1589). The phoenix rises from the ashes which must be a play on the cinders in this person’s name. Cendrat was of French ancestry.

The widow of Miguel de Luna (fl.1663-1665), who like her late husband had the title of printer to the city of Zaragoza and to the city’s hospital of Nuestra Señora de Gracia.

Nice intaglio title-page from important printer Maria de Quiñones of Madrid (d.1669).

Fancy hotel stationery. Down to 6 leaves but I like the fact it’s a booklet (though that means we’re no longer expected to write letters clearly).

North London United Against Aristotle.

Warm obituary of very impressive person. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It is quite disconcerting when, after you have been working with it for nearly 20 years, the company database performs unbidded a function that you have never seen before. (I guess “variety is the spice of life” but immediate fear is of losing everything and not being able to return to normal).

Photo taken from out of a train window in the NYC area last week.

Bottom edges, back in the office. You get a lot of books in with this very medieval/early modern way of doing things and it’s kind to the joints and hinges.

I love this Washington DC metro entrance.

Our social media team is absolutely killing it. 🔥 (Movie enjoyment greatly enhanced with sound.)

FEATHER UPDATE! Now identified as coming from a rooster.

Planned some cataloguing today, but didn’t expect to (re)discover this uncatalogued early 17th‑century specimen sheet comparing the same liturgical text in different type setting, with annotations noting the number of sheets required with that specific type and corresponding cost for printing!

🎵🎵18 early books sitting on a wall, and if one of those books should accidentally fall 🎵🎵

Thanks everyone for your help. One fellow bskyer suggested I talk to the fly-tying community, and another recommended the featherbase.info website. I indirectly found a fisher who thought it could work for making flies, & suggested the bird is a plover. Featherbase indicates it might indeed be.

Some properly dangling alum-tawed skin ties. These have often been cut off or similar from old books.

Flourishing here.

Thank you for helping me inadvertently discover this lovely website: www.featherbase.info

We (I mean @rcpmuseum.bsky.social) have one in a copy of Thevet's La cosmographie (1575), and I would be interested, likewise.