Oxford, UK, International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, 2022, Team Wilde

 Announcements, Book Trade Commentary, Conferences  2 Responses »
Oct 252022
 

Parati sumus seruire Deo nostro.

This work shall haue relation to tyme present, and present use. To mysteries far exceading it: And finally to a purpose & Intent: whereby the Maiestie and Name of God, shall and may, and, of force, must appeare with the Apparition of his wunders, and mervayles yet unhard of. —From De Heptarchia Mystica of Dr. John Dee

We look at texts of mysteries and wonder to be aspired. I walked the halls of cold stone, peeking creatures and whispering trees. The books did speak, loudly–as did the whispering trees. The books, however, were speaking loudly. Some sitting upright since the 13th century, waiting to share their stories. Oxford became a pilgrimage for me. A look into these most sacred of spaces. 

The ILAB Congress “strives to uphold and improve professional standards in the trade, to promote honourable conduct in business, and to contribute in various ways to a broader appreciation of the history and art of the book.” ILAB.org

IIn September 2022, I attended my first ILAB Congress. I was particularly excited because it was held in Oxford. I suppose it is in my nature to be an antiquarian. I have been working in libraries since I was about 17. While I comply with the contemporary technologies of our digital age and see the benefit to habituating with such conveniences, there is an irreplaceable confluence in the physicality of spaces and intellectualism in a place like Oxford. Just by being in Oxford, my desire to connect people with the physical book became even stronger. We came together to perpetuate the posterity of the printed book, the primary source, a ghost trace in a photograph. The power of anachronism isn’t just for folly, it is the influence to make our synapses crackle and drives our humanity to construct a web of support within society. Without a drive to pursue the ‘real’, I’m afraid the chaos and disillusionment some of these conveniences allow will create the road to apathy.

I sat at the table where Oscar Wilde was disciplined. I looked at the private book carols of kings, walked along the path of Queen Elizabeth I.  I ate within Divinity. Gazed upon many dead animals skins. Reminded, again and again, that the library is an incubator, a crypt, a workshop and a calculation of the universe for all the infinite possibilities flooding a persistence of memory, records in space and time. 

I must first recognize my privilege to be here. The ILAB committee granted me a scholarship, for that I am truly grateful.  I mentioned in my statement that part of the professional standard for me, in addition to ethical business practices, is I recognized something extraordinary about working with collectors, librarians, and scholars, and that I had only partial exposure to this world working in libraries. I have been only working with Lux Mentis, Booksellers for a few years, coming out of rare book libraries.  Relevant to my own pursuits, I have developed a subject specialty for occult and esoteric material, and it is my intention and desire to become one of the more recognized specialists in this field. I really want to be visible amongst my peers, as not just a bookseller, but as a bibliographer and a scholar.  I’m hoping my approach recognizes cultural agency and contextualization for underrepresented aspects of occult history, more specifically, women authors and indigenous people of color narratives.  I think it is important for the book trade to be recognized beyond the commerce of trade for the scholarship of its members.  

Secondly, a critical aspect of the ILAB Congress is to bolster collaborative working relationships between the U.S. and international partners within the trade and I hope and believe this was nurtured by my attendance at the Congress. I have a great deal to share from my experience as a librarian and a rare book cataloger which may well be even more important in lieu of current events in the trade and librarianship. We must continue to strengthen our collective knowledge with partnerships between libraries and booksellers. Finally, I know there is a deep international tradition of buying and selling antiquarian occult books. It is my intention to strengthen my experience as an occult specialist in the U.S. with the hope of engaging with other international specialists on the importance and recognition of occult book history and further exposure of contemporary occult book publishing.

To be invited into these places, with direction and curiosity, is a remarkable honor for which I was immensely grateful. These places do, however, beg the question, why do we collect? Why do feel the right to parse information, aggregate, describe, and house intellectual and cultural objects? Is there power in acquisition? In self-examining these questions, I recognize the haphazard judgment of humanity. We do build walls around the idea of assumed dreams and ambitions. We put up masks to gaze upon and wonder how a person lived. We put books in row, like fingers of a skeleton, a cemetery of stories. The truth is, we need narrative. We also need the living to place the dead on a pulpit, as the cycle will not stop, the living seeking the dead, the dead then staring back as a reminder to live. We need to have available these lived experiences to advance everyone’s perpetuity.

Working in Special Collections libraries for over 20 years, I’ve learned to how best to use the term ‘treasure.’ In an antiquated way, the term implies ‘fragile.’ Do not touch, hands off. “We will keep this item in a sealed jeweled box and no human, insect, or earthen air will come in contact.” There is an actionable job to maintain the relationship between accessibility and preservation or security. Gatekeeping is dangerous when it becomes selective and unreasonable. When we ‘see’ objects, when we handle physical materials, we engage a different level of senses. Paper has a scent, ink bleeds differently, gold shines in the natural light, cloth frays and the skin crinkles and cracks when you turn the pages. Liking looking at a monster of a book. The Medieval fragmentary manuscript, bound together like a college student’s notebook with various endnotes, footnotes, a marginalia Frankenstein. His mind, his hand. A creature of habit and of his own liking.

I don’t feel the book trade will survive without collegiality. I also don’t feel it would survive without fairness. Yes, it is a commerce business. It is business, however, that thrives when competition is transparent. The respect built between colleagues is gratifying and grounding when spoken and communicated to each other.. Our time is best spent with sensibility, collaboration, and ingenuity.

My first exposure to a library was a modest Carnegie Library in a small Indiana town. There is no doubt in my mind that had I not had the exposure to libraries, my life would have ended up very differently. Libraries are investments in opportunities. As a bookseller, opportunity is an idea to ponder apart from exchanging goods and money. Different aspects of the book world function differently, of course. Academic libraries have an obligation to the students and the educational discourse, as it will eventually inform the entire community. I sensed a great deal of effort of responsibility at Oxford University to identify those obligations.

It is very easy to get caught up in the magic and glamour of Oxford’s Colleges. We see these places in movies; we recreate the spaces in literature. Yet students study and live here. People work and live here. The person who swept the floor in the 14th century Merton College Library is a part of the timeline, as much as Sir Henry Savile and Thomas Bodley. It is a real place to study under the Tolkein tree.

Pro tip: When in Oxford, go punting.

Boat Lord

Field trip day. While I am not naïve to the idea of wealth, nor overwhelmed by wealth, I am quietly reminded by what enormous amounts of wealth can represent. It can embody a castle, land, or material objects in the broadest sense. I will refrain from pondering the implications of the nature of such wealth and simply expound on the great beauty offered from the estates of Waddesdon Manor and Wormsley Park Library. Words like: incredible, overwhelming, haunting, grand are just entries of thesaurus. It brings to mind, as an outsider looking in, what is the nature and purpose of a specific private collection? The obvious is: people collect what they like, what is appealing, what is valuable to them. The physical private library is a vaulted investment…intellectual and arguably monetary. I tried to look apart from the structure of class to find a metaphysical source of enlightenment. Private collections represent moments of wonder to remind us that humanity still generates and benefits from intellectualism, imagination, and (again) opportunity. Being on this trip reinforced in me a desire to advocate for anyone and everyone to collect the printed and written word. As I am passionate and invested in this profession, being here, in these remarkable spaces, I was reminded again and again of how much I want to mentor others. I now have to organize the tools given to me and do the work.

Photographs by Kim Schwenk and Keith Royer.

I need thank my super spouse, Keith for accompanying me on this journey. Also, our delightful leader, Daniel Crouch of House Wilde,the ILAB Oxford Congress, the entire ILAB and ABA committee team for the opportunity, my friends and colleagues in the trade, and new friends from different countries I, with my partners at Lux Mentis, Booksellers, was able to meet and network with, many of the staff from Oxford University and private libraries, as well as all the host staff in the hotels, dining, transportation, and grounds, and the little mouse who greeted us at Merton College gardens. Thank you all many times over.

Reading Finnegans Wake, book art by Ximena Pérez Grobet, finds its home…

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Mar 152021
 

We are extremely pleased to announce that Ximena Pérez Grobet’s artist book, Reading Finnegans Wake, is on its way to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. It will become part of the DeLury Irish Literature collection (which has upwards of 300 Joyce works, including approximately 30 copies of Finnegans Wake) and the Marshall McLuhan Library (which has several copies of Finnegans Wake, heavily annotated by McLuhan – he claimed to have “cracked the code” behind the book). It is, arguably, the perfect home for the work.

Ximena‘s interpretation and reconstruction of James Joyce‘s masterpiece, Finnegans Wake, is one of the most extraordinary examples of an artist book we’ve had the pleasure of representing. Ximena had the Faber & Faber original disbound, had the textblock cut into strips, maintaining the original order, line by line and page by page, and then spent several years *knitting* the textblock back together. It is a work of mad genius, and the result is a visual and tactile gem.

I actually began working with Ximena and her Nowhereman Press because of this book, first working with some of her other books while she was finishing this masterwork…all the while, hoping she would allow me to represent it. Several years ago, I had stopped by her booth at CODEX – my attention caught, in large part, by the fact that she was sitting behind her table casually knitting strips of paper together on a pair of needles. The idea enchanted me, in no small part as I could hear my Belfast-born, Joyce-lover grandfather laugh and say, “Well, it’s no more nor less comprehensible than the original.” It was another year or so before she finished it, and the result is simply brilliant. Bound into four volumes, matching the four books of the work, it is a clever, elegant, and lovely artistic interpretation of the work.

“Finnegans Wake is a novel by James Joyce, written in 1939. It is considered one of the most complex books in English literature, as well as being unique in its experimental writing style. The purpose of the work is to visually display this complexity. Using a classic 1965 edition by Faber & Faber, the book was disbound, woven and rebound, respecting the original order of the pages and preserving the same cover. The new edition consists of 4 volumes covering the four parts and 450 pages of the original edition.” [Artist Statement]

Oxford University Press Announces the Publication of My Dad’s New Book!

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Jul 212020
 

Diseases in the District of Maine 1772 – 1820

The Unpublished Work of Jeremiah Barker, a Rural Physician in New England

Richard J. Kahn, Assistant Clinical Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine

Oxford University Press 9780190053253 August 2020 | $35.00 Hardback | 564 pages

Oxford University Press presents Diseases in the District of Maine 1772 – 1820.

So my dad has done a thing…over the course of a few decades, he fully annotated a previously unpublished work of a rural Maine physician. It is soon to be available from Oxford University Press. Preorder now!

Jeremiah Barker practiced medicine in rural Maine up until his retirement in 1818. Throughout his practice of fifty years, he documented his constant efforts to keep up with and contribute to the medical literature in a changing medical landscape, as practice and authority shifted from historical to scientific methods. He performed experiments and autopsies, became interested in the new chemistry of Lavoisier, risked scorn in his use of alkaline remedies, studied epidemic fever and approaches to bloodletting, and struggled to understand epidemic fever, childbed fever, cancer, public health, consumption, mental illness, and the “dangers of spirituous liquors.”

Dr. Barker intended to publish his Diseases in the District of Maine 1772-1820 by subscription – advance pledges to purchase the published volume – but for reasons that remain uncertain, that never happened. For the first time, Barker’s never before published work has been transcribed and presented in its entirety with extensive annotations, a five-chapter introduction to contextualize the work, and a glossary to make it accessible to 21st century general readers, genealogists, students, and historians.

This engaging and insightful new publication allows modern readers to reimagine medicine as practiced by a rural physician in New England. We know much about how elite physicians practiced 200 years ago, but very little about the daily practice of an ordinary rural doctor, attending the ordinary rural patient. Barker’s manuscript is written in a clear and engaging style, easily enjoyed by general readers as well as historians, with extensive footnotes and a glossary of terms. Barker himself intended his book to be “understood by those destitute of medical science.”

Advanced Praise for Diseases in the District of Maine 1772 – 1820

“A remarkable and previously unknown source of diseases and medicine in early America. With meticulous research and sensitive prose, Dr. Kahn has set this treasure in its social, cultural, and scientific context, making it accessible, informative, and engaging for everyone.”

– Jacalyn Duffin, MD, PhD, Professor Emerita Queen’s University, Kingston Canada

“After a publication delay of over 200 years, Diseases in the District of Maine is fully worth the wait. It offers a fascinating and at times dramatic immersion into medical practice in one part of the early American nation. Dr. Barker proves to be an earnest physician and amiable reporter; while Dr. Kahn ably helps out as a meticulous scholar and annotator.”

-Steven J. Peitzman, MD, FACP, Office of Educational Affairs, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA

“This immensely readable book is the result of Richard Kahn’s determination to see Jeremiah Barker’s notes and views on the practice of medicine in rural Maine 200 years ago recognised today. Barker’s fifty years’ journey shows his progression from apprentice to a master of his craft. Throughout, his case notes, with description of the patients and justification for his diagnoses and treatment, reveal an enlightened approach. He noted the characteristics of his patients and their habits along with detailing the local climate and geography to inform his thoughts, particularly with regard to consumption. He believed himself to be a scientific physician and his epidemiological observations led to him addressing life-style changes. This methodology was not that far from that of today and he can be considered a pioneer.”

–Dr John W. K. Ward, FRCPEdin, FRCGP, Past-president of both the Osler Club of London and the British Society for the History of Medicine

“This is an extraordinary look at “ordinary” Maine physician Jeremiah Barker and his attempt to practice medicine at the turn of the 19th century. We see Barker practicing and writing his ultimately unpublished History of Diseases in the District of Maine amidst the rise and fall of medical theories and practices, the birth of medical journals in this country, and the attempt by orthodox medical practitioners to establish a seemingly rational therapeutics. Complementing Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s contextualization of Maine midwife Martha Ballard in A Midwife’s Tale, Kahn places Barker’s own evolving theories, practices, and identity, along with the full and annotated transcript of Barker’s History of Diseases of the District of Maine itself, into historical context.”

– Scott Podolsky, MD, Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Director, Center for the History of Medicine, Countway Medical Library, Boston, MA

Pleased to announce the release of my father’s new book: Diseases in the District of Maine 1772-1820

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Jun 262020
 

About 30 years ago my father discovered an unpublished manuscript of a rural physician in what was then the District of Maine. In the years that followed, he meticulously (with my mother’s constant assistance) researched and annotated the manuscript. When he retired a few years ago, he turned all his attention to finishing the project and submitted the manuscript…aspirationally, he thought, to the Oxford University Press. To his unending surprise and pleasure, they were extremely supportive and agreed to publish. As a result, I’m pleased to announce the release of History of Diseases in the District of Maine 1772-1820: The Unpublished Works ofJeremiah Baker, a Rural Physician in New England. If you are interested and order now, use the code “AMPROMD9” and receive a 30% discount off the list price. [N.B. All author proceeds will be donated to the Maine Historial Society, where the original manuscript resides.]

Within the mortal form: Occult Miscellany

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Apr 172018
 

Here at Lux Mentis we like etymology. So here’s a quick lesson from Word School. The first definition Merriam-Webster lists for the word “occult” is: to shut off from view or exposure: cover, eclipse

  • the light of a star that was about to be occulted … by Uranus itself —Jonathan Eberhart

The list goes on to describe this notion of concealing, secretive, non-manifesting things, in terms of medical conditions. The word is Latin based and very much attached to esoteric modes of practices.

Currently, it seems the Western world seems to buzz with the occult, and historically it goes in waves of popularity with greater masses, as it did in the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of occult interests seems to follow a wave of conservative politics. Essential, people react when there’s a threat on many levels. The reality is that occult interest and everything that falls under its wings have always had a devout and steady scholarship and curiosities that extends to everything classified as “things that go bump in the night” to “Aeonic Transcendential Chaos Magick.” We like it all and like to find things that fit all shelves of the brain.

We’ve compiled a new list that reflects the nature of the occult and our continuing interest in supporting the proliferation of the esoterica.  Please visit our catalogs tab here for all our lists or you can just download Occult/Esoteric Miscellany.

 

Uwe Bremer etching

The nth Convention (second edition)

 Acquisitions, Announcements, Artist Books, Fine Press  No Responses »
Sep 302017
 

We have a had a run of interesting, unusual fine press and/or artists books land recently, but this stood out and I thought I’d throw up a quick overview:

Julie Rafalski, Tahu Deans and David Henningham re-enacted Cold War psychic drawing experiments in a Leipzig building that had formerly housed an East German supercomputer. They also reconstructed the computer as a set to be reconfigured and photographed.

These pictures, films, drawings and transcripts make up the content of this book. Operating like the distinct CMYK dots that merge optically to form a full-colour picture, the artists have worked together to take the viewer through corridor spaces, doctored photographs, and a psychic spying apparatus redolent of the building itself. Not every page is accessible without the use of a knife.

And because gilding the lily is always a good thing…

The books are editioned using a vector-based system so that each book is assigned a non-hierarchical relationship to the others.

The Salvage Press edition of Swift’s A Modest Proposal: timely and deeply, deeply powerful…

 Acquisitions, Announcements, Artist Books, Feature, Fine Bindings  No Responses »
Sep 252017
 

We have just received three copies(!) of Jamie Murphy’s simply brilliant edition of J. Swift’s A Modest Proposal. We will soon(ish) have three(!!!) copies of the deluxe edition, too. I have trouble reducing to words just how much I adore this work, but if you will bear with the simulacra of various images, I will try to convey the exquisite power and delicacy in execution embodied in this work. As you likely know,  A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick, more commonly known by its short-title, is Swift’s 1729 satirical pamphlet suggesting the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. It was a hastily printed pamphlet, modest in execution. The Salvage Press’ edition is not…it is rich in dark leather and marbled paper and monumental in size: imperial folio.

Jamie approaches the work from both a modern-situational aspect, but also from a profoundly personal one, with not one but two children with a rare genetic condition. “I had heard of A Modest Proposal years before but hadn’t read it until this period. The text seemed relevant and current – are the Irish not still in a shocking financial condition? Are we not still being plundered by absentee landlords? Are our children not about to incur the fallout from a previous generation’s mistakes? I started to think about reprinting the text. My daughter Olivia was born in 2016, presenting signs of the same genetic condition as my son. I knew they would have to be involved, and in one way this project was designed to mark their births.”

Jamie approached David O’Kane to illustrate the work, as he felt David’s preferred technique, scratching an image directly onto lithography stones, would create a rather haunting effect. Jamie’s suggesting that David use images of his children for inspiration, while challenging, nevertheless helped shape and shadow the remarkable power of the images.

David notes, “Swift’s voice was critical of those in power but also of the exploited masses and their deference to that power. In this sense it is still critically relevant today. The baby in the deanery dining table image appears to be eating her own hand, while simultaneously pointing an accusatory hand toward the viewer. The empty chairs await the hungry landlords. The question raised by the image is whether we want to pull up a seat at this horrific meal or find another way of setting out the table?”

Jamie asked Jessica Traynor to write nine new poems, each responding to the original text. Like the others, her contribution also integrated current events. As Jessica recalls, “So much history unfolded around me as I worked on the poems – the migrant crisis bled into Brexit, bled into the Citizens’ Assembly, bled into the Trump presidency, and I wrote poems in response to all of these events. But it would be impossible to write about the Ireland of the 21st century without writing about direct provision [the system of dealing with asylum seekers].”

The result is that rare Aristotelian work, with the whole being so much more than the sum of its parts. It is wry, and soul-draining, and funny, and touching, and brilliant, and challenging, and so much more…all once. You can return to it over and over and find something new in the image, prose, poetry, and/or design that you missed before. It is, simply, brilliant.

Jamie commissioned a wonderful video that explores the creation of the work and The Irish Times wrote this wonderful article on the work, rich with additional information and well worth a read. Enjoy both. We hope to have a standard at the Boston ABAA book fair, though there are fewer than 10 copies remaining. A complete description can be found here. I will almost certainly have one of the Deluxe editions, however, as they are a fair bit more dear…but that is for another time [teaser: 5 unique back-painted bindings, each reflecting a major theme]. Finally, that Jamie is barely 30 bodes well for the future. He has produced some remarkable work (see, e.g. Albert, Ernest & the Titanic)…but this hints of things to come. I, for one, cannot wait.

A Modest Proposal from ror conaty on Vimeo.

 

Death…becomes her [post-mortem 1.0]

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Aug 072017
 

 

We are beginning to release a series of special themed short lists, this one inspired by the “death positive” movement, not just for collecting, but for understanding about death culture and documentation.

“Death Becomes Her” can be viewed on our catalogue page, along with other catalogues of the mostly recently past.

Next big fair is ABAA 41st Annual Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair, November 10-12, 2017! Can’t wait!

 

The Book of Penumbra and the magic of Gabby Cooksey

 Acquisitions, Announcements, Artist Books, Fine Bindings  No Responses »
Jul 242017
 

I have had the great pleasure of working with Gabby Cooksey since she burst forth from North Bennet School and began inflicting her genius upon the world. I had the great pleasure of placing her first binding in Univ. of Virginia’s Special Collections and the greater pleasure of watching her explore, evolve, and expand with each new work. I have said since I saw her first work that she makes design decisions as a new, now young, binder that I would expect from one with decades under her belt… Part of this is to NBS’s credit, but much has to do with Gabby’s profoundly subtle and sophisticated way of looking at her projects and finding elegant solutions at nearly every turn…

It was not long before she branched out and began writing text, creating art, and printing all elements of some projects. Thus we have today’s gem: The Book of Penumbra, of which Gabby writes,

“Death has always fascinated me because it happens to all of us yet no one talks about it. I wanted to see what other cultures personified death as through myths and legends. The gods in this book are very hushed and for some, even if you speak the name, you’ll be cursed. I wanted this book to be shadows, to be played in the light. I chose a delicate paper so one could see through to the page behind it. The text is in all sorts of shapes because I wanted each story to represent the god being told about. For instance, Sedna is in the shape of drowning, Anubis is his eye, Mac is a pit with someone at the bottom. The borders are all plants, roots, and things found on the earth. Some represent death like the poppy, and the yew tree.”

Completed in an edition of 23, bound in wraps, and housed in a box with an inlaid coffin, it is a beautiful bit of work. As she is seldom content with ‘exquisite’, I received a package out of the blue and found a one-off art binding of the book with seven skulls suspended by gold in the cut-through front board (insert above). Always pushing, always expanding…ever brilliant. I am always excited about what she will produce next. Explore the book below…

Summer is coming…that means RBMS!!!

 Announcements, Artist Books, Book Fairs, Conferences, rbms  No Responses »
Jun 012017
 

 

Yes, despite what we complain about, there are things we enjoy about the approaching summer. That includes attending the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section conference in Iowa City! Lux Mentis will be part of the Bookseller showcase this year, along with many other fine booksellers. We are especially excited to feature our selection of book arts and primary source materials in keeping with this year’s theme, “The Stories We Tell.” We are also sponsoring the panel: “MATERIALIA LUMINA: THE CONTEMPORARY BOOK IN ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT: PHILOSOPHICAL MUSING OF THREE MASTER PRINTERS” featuring Peter Rutledge Koch, Russell Maret, and Gaylord Schanilec.

As a large part of our mission we aim to support especially book arts and book narratives, so we will have a good selection of artist’s books and both pictorial and literary narratives. A few of our latest acquisitions will be featured including works by Ximena Perez Grobet, Lorena Velázquez, Alexandra Janezic, Maureen Cummins, and Sam Winston. As usual, we will also bring a few challenging and provocative things.

Before the show, we will be attending the Chicago Book & Paper Fair and during the week of RBMS we will also be attending the Solstice Book Fair organized by book artists, Alexandra Janezic and Candida Pagan.

Until then, keep reading, keep collecting! See you in Iowa City!

 

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