Recently in Book Fairs Category

The highly-respected English novelist A.S. Byatt says that women who write industrial-strength fiction are treated by critics as oddities, "like a dog standing on its hind legs."

Byatt said this while firmly standing on the only two legs she has as she addressed the Edinburgh international book festival this week, accepting the James Tait Black memorial prize for her novel, "The Children's Book." Previous recipients of this literary award, Britain's oldest, include D.H. Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene.

Running from Sept. 2-5 at the Baltimore Convention Center, the Baltimore Summer Antiques Show is widely recognized as the largest indoor antiques show in the U.S. It includes a 70-dealer antiquarian book fair within the show. A few of those dealers booked for Baltimore shared some highlights with us.

The rare book department at Arader Galleries is bringing some treasures from its travel and natural history libraries at 72nd Street in New York (seen above). According to Arader's Kate Hunter, "Some of the highlights of [Arader's] collections that we will be bringing to Baltimore include Audubon's iconic The Birds of America, from Drawings made in the United States and America, published in seven volumes in Philadelphia between 1839 and 1844, this is the first octavo edition with 500 hand-colored lithographed plates after originals by Audubon, and including 65 images not found in the earlier celebrated Elephant folio edition of 1827-1838. In recording the birds of America and imbuing each image with natural grace and scientific accuracy Audubon established himself as the premier bird artist of his age and since." She said they've also packed a fine copy of Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal, from the famous library of Beriah Botfield, and including 500 superbly hand-colored copper engravings. She called it "one of the most comprehensive and most beautiful records of English and exotic flora." Arader will also offer the first major work of Sir Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, with the Natural History of the Herbs and Trees... Kate Hunter invites readers to stop by stand 808 to see these (and other) rare treasures from Arader.

Griffon's Medieval Manuscripts of St. Petersburg, Florida, will have a medieval leaf and a Piranesi print among its offerings. The leaf, seen here at left, is from an illuminated Antiphoner manuscript, Bologna, circa 1300, with a $30,000 price tag. There are seven lines of text, in a gothic liturgical hand and of music on a four line red stave. The Giovanni Battista Piranesi print titled "Veduta dell' Atrio del Portico di Ottavia" dates to 1760 and is in very good to excellent condition. Griffon's also has a rare map of early America by Henri Abraham Chatelain, as well a pristine miniature leaf from a finely illuminated Dewan, early 19th century, seen here at right. At $475, it speaks to the company's mission of introducing people to affordable art. As Dr. Anthony Griffon has written of his company, "Our goal is to attract the average person to experience a different and exciting arena of art collecting."

Ian J. Kahn of Lux Mentis Booksellers in Maine shared some stunning images of the material he's bringing to Baltimore this year. At left, Portraits of the Children of Nobility (1838) is uncommon in its full burgundy leather binding and has what Kahn called "a wonderful collection of images, each with supporting prose and poetry" for $425. A fine press book guaranteed to turn heads at Kahn's booth is Mokomaki: Thirteen Etchings of Shrunken & Tattooed Maori Heads, illustrated by Leonard Baskin and published in a numbered limited edition by the Eremite Press, 1985. Wrote Kahn about this interesting item seen below, which he is selling for $12,500: "This is one of four copies created within the 'Deluxe' first 10 copies. The 'Super Deluxe' copies were created in response to Baskin's friend (and vellum dealer) asking him if he would consider printing some of the images onto vellum. The result is inexplicably wonderful." Also at Kahn's booth will be an 1806 pamphlet titled Horrid massacre!!! that is said to be the first example of engraving for a printed book in the state of Maine, very scarce at $2,500.

For those who are also interested in art and antiques, more than 550 international dealers will be exhibiting in Baltimore, in areas such as fine art, furniture, jewelry, porcelain, textiles, and folk art. Check out the website for hours, prices, and a list of vendors.

The Renegade Craft Fair is coming to Los Angeles this weekend. I heard about this fair from the Typeface documentary I watched recently. It's basically a big fair that features hundreds of independent artists and handmade crafts, including letterpress posters, prints, and stationery. The fair is held in several cities throughout the year (was in Brooklyn back in June, will be in Chicago in Sept., etc.). Looks like the biblio-artists line-up in LA includes Bound in Circles, ExLibris Anonymous, Dandy Lion Press, InVita Paper Studio, Krank Press, Paper & Type, Paper Pastries, Paper Scoundrels, Pie Bird Press, Power & Light Press, RarRar Press, Redstar Ink, Squid Ink Collective, Sweetie Pie Press, Tiselle Letterpress, and more. Could be some very cool finds for collectors of letterpress and/or the Avant-garde.

Book dealer and colleague John Waite posted the following poignant account of his experiences at this past weekend's Cooperstown Book Fair to the ABAA's private email discussion list. I enjoyed it so much I asked if he would mind my sharing it here as well. I'm very pleased he agreed.

Most book fairs are neither good nor bad, just well organized and run... or not. The Cooperstown fair is one of the former. Housed in an attractive, well-lit athletic and recreational facility not far from the Baseball Hall of Fame, the fair has been held during the latter part of June for many years, more or less standing its ground in the face of declining enthusiasm for book fairs generally. A mostly regional event organized by dealers Will Monie and Ed Brodzinsky, Cooperstown stays in the game like a perennial minor league player who just isn't ready to quit. As is the case with every book fair some exhibitors do well, some don't, but most return for another year.

Yesterday when I left Vermont to begin the four-hour drive to Cooperstown, I hadn't gone more than 15 miles south on I-91 when I noticed a large dog, maybe some kind of yellow lab mix, wandering on the highway in the sad way that dogs do when they are lost or abandoned. He seemed to be making his way north, stopping and tentatively looking this way and that before continuing. Whenever I see dogs walking aimlessly by themselves, the sight depresses me. So the trip to Cooperstown did not begin in the most auspicious way.

On the way I stopped to preview two country auctions, left bids on one or two things at each, and continued my drive. I also made impromptu stops at a used bookstore in Vermont and an antique shop in Glens Falls, NY, neither of which yielded any finds. My four-hour drive had by then had worked into a nearly seven hour safari, and I was still more than a half-hour from Cooperstown when I decided to have dinner, even though stopping then precluded even dropping off my books before the Friday set-up closed at 8 p.m. I checked into my room at KC's motel in East Springfield, 15 miles north of Cooperstown, about 7:45 that evening, got out my laptop to check my email and look-up a few items, phoned my wife, and called it a day.

This morning I left the hotel early to go set up. I took the less-traveled Route 31 on the east side of the lake south towards Cooperstown. On the way I passed a handmade road sign that read in red letters "Thou Shalt Not Steal." It was kind of strange since at that very moment I had been mulling over how much I had recently offered someone for a book that I probably wasn't going to get. Much later it occurred to me that I should have stopped and taken the sign. I was at the fair by 7 a.m., arriving almost in tandem with Will Monie, who kindly helped me unload. Because I usually travel without a lot of material compared to most book dealers, I quickly set-up and in little more than a half-hour was out on the floor nosing around. Because I'm currently long on receivables and short on cash, I had little money to spend. I didn't see much that I wanted to buy, except for a protectionist-themed 19th century fabric broadside with edges in red, white & blue in support of American Labor and American Industry. If I had been more flush with cash, I would have purchased it by myself. As it happened, another dealer liked it too, so we bought it together.

That turned out to be the high point of the fair for me, at least for business. I managed to sell one item to the trade for a full one-third discount, but it didn't even cover the $225 investment for my half-booth. On the other hand, I enjoyed talking with other dealers, including an older man I had not met before who had served for nearly a decade as a US consular official in Pakistan in the 1950s. He told stories of working on commerce issues in Lahore and traveling with a military escort to meet tribal chieftains in Waziristan. In the decades since he had built a considerable library of books on Central and South Asia, in which he now trades.

At the end of the day, it was just another day. I took the most direct route home and returned after a little more than four hours. About three miles from my exit on the interstate, I noticed an animal dead on the right shoulder of the highway. At first I figured it was a deer with the light red-tan coat they wear in early summer. Then I realized it was the dog I saw yesterday just a few miles further south. Confused, lost, and probably not paying much attention, he had walked in front of a car or truck. I felt sickened for a moment then thought, apropos of nothing, that this dog's end might be a metaphor for something. Then I thought maybe it ought to be a metaphor for making metaphors.

The relationship between book dealers and librarians can often be a bit like that between siblings. We both may come from the same family of book lovers, but that doesn't mean there's not some rivalry or even occasional conflict. This is probably inevitable. After all, institutions and booksellers are often competing for the same materials, and each approaches those materials with differing perspectives and goals. Dealers are ultimately looking to make a profit, while institutions are charged with stewarding materials and making them available for the coming generations.

Alas, we're not in London for the Olympia fair, but we can take a look at the available treasures nonetheless. The fair opened late today and runs through Saturday.