Theme
RK: Hello and welcome back! This month we had hoped to be live from the New York Antiquarian Book Fair at the Park Avenue armory. But, well, the fair (and life) happened—it was very all-consuming. The NYABF is one of the largest and most prominent book fairs in the world, with dealers, collectors, librarians, and curators from all over the world converging on the Upper East Side for a carnivalesque week of bibliophile business and pleasure.
I attended my first NYABF in 2018, having just moved to New York to take my position at Christie’s the previous summer. It can definitely be overwhelming for a first-timer, but I think that’s just part of the process. You must just let it wash over you, don’t be scared, and be open to discovery. This year, I had the realization that it doesn’t really get less overwhelming; with more experience, it is just overwhelming in a different way. This was my first year actually working behind a booth for the entire fair.
JWD: It’s fun do be doing our first live (ish) issue, and it’s really fun to be able to share a bit about one of the events that brings all sorts of folks in the republic of books together (curators, librarians, scholars, collectors, dealers, auctioneers, &c, &c): NYABF! Mine was just a year later than your first one, Rhiannon - 2019. I remember it well, since I have a photo of me taken by NICHO LOWRY! Jacket hyyyype!
That was the first fair I attended after I started at Linda Hall - I remember distinctly the cards I bought from (then) Rebecca Romney and Heather O’Donnell at Honey & Wax, as well as this WILD moon manuscript. It was a fun fair, but my first real one ever, and I was a little overwhelmed!
Before we get stuck in to the bigger stuff, Rhiannon, I want to share this really thoughtful post about book fair etiquette that Rebecca Romney shared recently:
Introductory Book Fair Etiquette for Institutional Rare Book Buyers
Which is chock full of good pointers on behavior, holds, and all sorts of other things younger Jason would have wanted to know. My codicil to her great post: you likely have a dealer you know and trust if you’re going to the fair - follow their lead on what and how to do things! (ALSO pet peeve - remember the books are not yours, yet, and don’t get super aggressive with the books or careless (thinking about the opening evening in particular!)).
Is that year the one we met, too? For the life of me, I cannot remember (RK: I think it was, but we actually met at one of the many Grolier Club events concurrent with the fair). Did I buy something from Nina that year too, maybe the playing card binding? No, wait, the Timmerman book?
Speaking of Nina, I gather shes got some cool stuff this year, anything you want to point out to folks, Rhiannon?
RK: The etiquette post is great! I started attending book fairs when I worked at the Getty and was actually buying. Learning how to be be at the fair as an auctioneer was a bit of an adjustment, since I was really largely there just to learn and hangout. I was so nervous to get in the way or waste someone’s time! But most everyone was very kind to me, and I slowly learned to find my place.
This year was different because I was behind the booth counter during fair opening for the first time. I’ve known Nina Musinsky since before I came to New York and it was a real pleasure to get to help (wo)man her booth this year in my short “interregnum” between jobs. If you stopped by last week, you would have seen everything from incunabula and Greek printing to fans printed with French political commentary, bindings made from copper or silk velvet or embroidery, and a few extremely fascinating early illustrated German books (including a guide to the torments of Hell and a very naughty sheep). I confess I didn’t get out of the booth as much as I probably should have to view other people’s wares—but that was by design, as I was there in part so Nina had more time to do just that.
Opening night of the fair goes until 9pm, which means a late dinner for all the exhibitors. Since that’s usually not far off from my bedtime, it meant an intense start to the week—which in fact had actually started at 9am the day before with set up. I must confess, the whole thing is a bit of a blur to me! What were some of your favorite things you saw the fair?
JWD: There are three really big standouts for me. The first is perhaps a little off piste for me, but something I wanted to highlight because it’s amazing and I got a little glimpse of how much work went into describing it. Jess Starr at Jarndyce did some outstanding bibliographical detective work (are we coining detective bibliography here, RK?) with the now-sold copy of The Monk, by Matthew Gregory Lewis. Jess did some really notable work with edition, issue, and state, which you can read in full in Jarndyce’s NYABF catalog (it’s no. 38). Here’s a sentence of hers that should whet your appetite to learn more: “The final mystery is why this sole surviving copy, on strange multicoloured paper with carefully redacted imprints, exists at all.” I got to see it when I visited Jess, and she was rightfully proud of her work. I understand it sold at the fair, and I am excited to share where it ended up (yes, I know, no I can’t tell you all where. YET. But it went to a good home!) It was also a reminder that I need to pay more attention to Victorian books!
Second on the list was a book I’ve drooled over many times over the past few years - a hand colored, presentation copy (in a gift binding!) of Tycho Brahe’s Astronomiae instauratae mechanica, 1598. Every time I go by the Herman Lynge & Søn booth, Saúl tempts me with this dang book. Yes, I know Linda Hall already has a copy of the book, and I love it, but this one is just such an incredible survivor. The Lynge description says that this is one of 40 copies in the first issue (they say edition, I think it’s an issue?) which Tycho had printed as presentation copies, that he had hand colored as well. Well, the hand coloring here is INCREDIBLE (see the above image) and there’s stinking gold in it, so it’s illuminated, too. But maybe for me the most mind-blowing part is that the binding is still intact - a FREAKING blue silk binding. Yes, it’s been repaired, but what an incredible survivor of a presentation copy.
Third, you know I had to stop and see the excellent Christian Westergaard of Sophia Rare Books, and he really (to use a crap baseball metaphor) brought the high heat. I got to show my brother and his wife Christian’s copy of De rev, 1543, but the highlight for me was his copy of Apollonius of Perga’s Opera of 1537 with provenance that BLEW MY SMALL MIND - it was owned both by John Dee and John Winthrop. It has extensive annotations in Dee’s hand, and Winthrop’s manuscript ownership inscription on the title page. As is so frequently the case with Christian, his description is outstanding, and you should read it!
And, well, fourth is something I bought for LHL that I never thought I’d see. It should arrive today (assuming we’re still on schedule for sending this issue). More soon!
I should also mention that I got to see some dear, dear people: Garrett Scott and Rebecca Baumann (my former ExLibris co-moderators), Basie Bales Gitlin, John McQuillen, Sam Fore, Jess Starr, Emma Walshe, Rebecca Romney, and the irrepressible and wonderful Jamie Cumby. So much, so good, so overstimulating!
Two Cool Things
JWD: Friends, it’s finally time to announce the Major New Acquisition I’ve been teasing for MONTHS now:
The Linda Hall Library has acquired a copy of the ordinary paper issue of Galileo’s most famous book, the Sidereus nuncius of 1610.
This Sidereus is bound with three other titles: Kepler’s Narratio de observatis a se quatuor Iovis satellitibus erronibus, and Kepler’s Dioptrice. This copy will join one issue and one other edition of that same book – one the fine paper issue and the other the edition printed in Frankfurt in 1610. The acquisition of the ordinary paper issue makes the Library the only place in the world where researchers can use all three “versions” of this important book in one place. Beyond this, why would the Library acquire another copy of a title it already has two of? The answer (and interest) lies in using books as material objects to reveal information about Galileo, his work, and his world.
The newly-acquired copy is one of an elite group of copies of Sidereus, being one of fifteen known that have corrections to the printed text in Galileo’s hand. The Library’s copy of the fine paper issue is also in this group, with three corrections in Galileo’s hand. The newly-acquired copy has five, and also has an additional asterism in the famous star image in signature D of the book. There are differences in how Galileo corrected the printed text, and having two inks to sample might yield important results. Let me share just a tiny bit about each of these points, but my long-form essay is also available here on the Library’s website.
The new ordinary paper copy includes an asterism on D5 recto not found in the Library’s copy, but seen in the untrimmed copy at the Library of Congress. The edges of this leaf still are deckled, meaning that they are the untrimmed edges of a whole sheet of paper, likely super-median sized (38 x 52 cm unfolded), confirming the work of Paul Needham in his Galileo Makes a Book.
I mentioned that the new ordinary paper copy has five Galilean corrections, both of which appear on the verso of E1: “exitare” corrected to “haesitare," and “caepit” corrected to “caepi.” It bears remarking that the hand Galileo used to correct this copy is different than the one he used in fine paper copies, an avenue for further study.
The new ordinary paper copy bears evidence of folding before it was bound, which indicates its likely initial distribution through diplomatic mail networks. These folds are most evident in the final signature of the book (G), and become less evident through to the titlepage. In his report on the book, Nick Wilding stated:
A few other copies were similarly folded, the best known being that of the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenale in Paris. The general assumption is that folding the gatherings into this small format would allow for them to move swiftly through diplomatic mail systems as letters rather than in bulk through the book trade. It has been assumed that the reason for sending books through these high-cost systems is speed. Therefore the present copy, alongside that of the Arsenal copy, presents something of a paradox: they were both sent swiftly (and expensively) by Galileo to their recipients, but they were also retained by Galileo until he had already fulfilled the obligations of his initial patronage network.
Indeed, there are letters in Galileo’s collected works and letters (the Opere) in which the Medicean court authorizes the later distribution of Galilean telescopes through their diplomatic networks, specifically in Opere vol. 10, p. 355-356.
Speaking of Nick, I had the joy of hosting Nick and Paul Needham at the Library to look closely at the book, and begin to ask questions of the copy and who the recipient of this copy might have been. While there, we (mostly Nick and Paul, let’s be honest) noticed that signature C is two half sheets, rather than being a single sheet of paper, which shows that Galileo ensured all of the moon etchings were present, as the moon etchings were printed late in the process.
More on Nick and Paul in a moment, but I do at least want to gesture at what initially piqued my interest in this copy - that it included the incredibly rare Frankfurt printed Narratio de observatis, by Johannes Kepler, in 1611. For the whole story on this book, visit the long form piece I linked above, but it was the only scientifically significant lifetime publication by Kepler that the Library lacked. The sammelband also included a copy of Kepler’s Dioptrice, and until recently had a copy of Christmann’s Nodus gordius, which was removed to obtain an export license from Italy (and the Library has a copy of it, too).
We acquired the book from the wonderful Christian Westergaard at Sophia Rare Books, who not only brought in Nick early on, before it was offered, but also Nicholas Pickwoad, who examined the binding in-depth and concluded that the binding structure was created shortly after the addition of the Christmann pamphlet in 1612, and that it was bound likely in today’s Italy, not in Germany. The combination of the items in the sammelband, the Galilean corrections, the diplomatic folding, and the binding structure prompt some very big questions about the book’s intended recipient, none of which I can conclusively answer - but Nick and Paul and I are on the case!
Anyhow, the new Sidereus will be on display at the Library during our new acquisitions show this summer, come and see it! And if you see me at the fair, I’d be happy to talk more about it!
RK: Congrats Jason! I know that acquisition has been in the works for a while. And also is a demonstration of an important fact—a lot of buying happens before the fair opens to the public, between dealers during set up and also from the lists that dealers send in advance of the fair.
The book I couldn’t stop taking off the shelf in Nina’s booth was her copy of the Lorenzo di Alopa edition of the Planudean Greek Anthology, bound for Roxburghe. The Greek Anthology is a collection of Hellenistic poetry preserved together in the manuscript tradition. This particular version is called “Planudean” after Maximus Planudes, a monk who edited (and sometimes somewhat bowdlerized) the larger corpus (known as the Palatine Anthology, not rediscovered until 1606) in the 13th century. It includes a lot of short occasional poems and epigrams.
If you’ve seen much Renaissance Greek printing, it should immediately catch your eye as unusual. The type, designed by Lascaris, is entirely majuscule (uppercase) and meant to imitate the look of inscriptions. This is entirely appropriate for the poems of the Greek Anthology, as many of them originated as, or are imitating, the types of poetry which you might find as inscriptions (epitaphs, for example). I think the types in this book are so elegant and beautiful and legible.
If you’re familiar with the Aldine Greek types, for instance, you’ll know that they are quite different, imitating the cursive handwriting of the Byzantine emigres who helped kickstart the study of Greek in Italy (you can actually see in the picture that someone writing in just this sort of hand has annotated the passage).
Although a truly virtuosic typographic achievement, those types—dense with ligatures—can be difficult to read (something that book historians like Proctor and Buehler loved to complain about). I think this is a little unfair, but nevertheless I am a great admirer of the printing of the Greek Anthology. The types were ultimately judged to not be very convenient for scholarly printing, and so this book represents a sort of pruned branch in the history of printing in Greek. It was printed in Florence in 1494, right before Aldus really got going. Prior to Aldus, Florence had really been the main center of Greek learning in Italy due to the patronage of the Medici; this book has a printed dedication to Piero which was suppressed from some copies after his expulsion from Florence later that same year. You can read her excellent description here.
Current Events
RK: The fair of course was the big event! And wasn’t just shopping; on Saturday, the ABAA has a series of lectures for fair-goers, including a great talk by Mark McConnell’s on the business practices of the Plantin press, but there a lot on offer for a wide range of interests! Back at my former employer, highlights from the Pasachoff collection were view, as well as a touring exhibition of extremely fabulous manuscripts from the Schoyen collection; if you missed it, Pasachoff will have a full exhibition before the sale in June.
JWD: Also for our fellow friends in NYC - the Manhattan Fine Press Fair is running, too, and looks like they have some wonderful exhibitors this year - Ken and Liv of Two Ponds, Sarah Horowitz, Richard Wagener, Gaylord Schanilec, just to name a few of the fine folks. Excited to see more of their great work! (Oh! I went to Mark McConnell’s talk on Plantin, which presents some really compelling arguments about the economics of printing, and the business choices that printers had to make and the risks they took. I really want to see the finished work, I suspect it will give us some broader arguments about edition sizes and printing and such!)
Also, Rhiannon, speaking of your work on Jay’s books - excited to see what you made of his copy of Saggiatore!
RK: The Pasachoff copy of Saggiatore is quite lovely—and I was able to greatly improve the description based on your article with Nick Wilding! The Pasachoff copy has the shorter, original version of the errata as well as the extra half-sheet of errata that Galileo had printed in Florence in his disgust at all the errors in the book (a classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen, it seems, plus an unwillingness to let G totally off the leash which introduced a lot of mistakes). Working on this book actually kind of blew my mind, because you can read a lot about it before you come to the realization that, although it is a really famous scientific polemic that makes some important statements about the scientific process, Galileo was actually totally wrong about comets. He was a comet denier. Justice for Orazio Grassi!!!
Let’s Get Personal
RK: I’m in the weeds of preparing my move to Philadelphia the first week of May. Lease is signed, movers booked, plans are afoot! Wish me luck. Next time you hear from me, I’ll be a “narb.” I’m also hoping to spend a little bit of time enjoying being a tourist in New York for my final few weeks. I don’t even want to tell you all the major NYC things I’ve never done in my seven years here. I’m also hoping to spend some time at the New York Historical Society to consult the papers of the book dealer Lathrop Harper for my ongoing project on Lucy Eugenia Osborne (and her one-time colleague, Emma Miriam Lone). Perhaps a subject for a later newsletter.
JWD: Well, let’s see - I’ve moved to a new place in downtown Kansas City, which is nice. Waiting on some additional furniture to hang all my art, etc, and I celebrated a birthday recently (and yes I bought myself some Hertzog books!) I am really looking forward to seeing my brother, Zach, graduate from Princeton Seminary in May, and to see the fam and such. Hoping for more travel plans soon, and I’ll need to come visit y’all in Philadelphia after you’re settled! I did set my big southwest roadtrip for the end of May (accepting applications for co-pilots, seriously contact me if you want to come along), and I’ll be in Seattle in June for the wedding of my friend of 20 (oh lord) years: Jason Elliott.
Conclusion
JWD: Rhiannon, I don’t know about you, but it’s just day two of the fair being open, and I am exhausted. It’s so wonderful to see such great books, friends, and have such great bookish energy, but with so much happening, I am very overstimulated and thanks to late trains being express past my stop, I had a solid walk to my hotel.
I think I am just about recovered physically and emotionally from the fair, I know lots of our friends take quite some time to recover, and rightly so.
RK: Jason, the fair ended a week ago and I am just now feeling like I’ve caught up on sleep and introvert “me time.” Let’s do it again next year! But remember the golden rule: never go to the after party.
Join us next month for reflections On Error!