Anyone who handles older books will have come across these small, and sometimes beautiful labels pasted discreetly (more or less) into the endpapers. Booksellers, binders, printers, publishers, importers, and distributors of books used to advertise in this way their part in bringing the book to market.
Most of the earliest examples shown here, belong to book binders. These were a continuation of binders' earlier practice of sewing into the binding a small ticket with their signature. I always find them fascinating, as if finding a small door or a forensic puzzle, not merely regarding the book, but also its seller, the city and the time in which the book first lived, and was then passed on to the reader.
If you look very carefully at them, and have your wits about you, you will see what I'm on about. A cultivated interest in Typefaces and their origins, will greatly assist all participantalons. sorry ...
An ipad, to the first person who successfully identifies every city and era. ( I'm lying about the ipad, but I will give you a good smack about the head which bloody well should be just as coveted .. ) good luck and finally, apologies about the layout, in the bis we call the style a 3 G&T's layout ...
No comments:
Post a Comment