Rare Books Blog by Calix Books

Antiques, Books and Ephemera

Sometimes when we go hunting for rare books, rare ephemera and antiques, some items we find strike our fancy. In this week's picking case we found a couple of items that are outside of our normal Antiquarian books and rare ephemera items that we go looking for and sometimes, that's what you should do as well. We buy items first on quality and unusual or rare occurance. The first item we found at Todd's farm, a mere 45 minutes up and back, up route 1A and back Route 1 (because its faster). Is this Avery scale: Click the picture and an new window will open for you.

The first item we bought on site and from an old dealer friend of mine was an antique, brass and iron Avery store scale that measures nearly 31 inches from base to top and weighs nearly 15 pounds. It is marked Avery with a model number on the bottom and it struck us as a very rare item in such good condition. My dealer buddie said in the 35 years picking and selling, he has had only two of these. It hasn't really been futzed with too much or too buggered as we say in the trade. What it doesn't have are the corresponding Avery weights for up to seven pounds (if it did, this baby would be worth twice what it is currently). Avery was a weight manufacturer from the 1760's all the way until 1918. The new Avery Berkel scales company is not the same company as these scales are often referred to as Avery Scales as well. On closer examination and you can see more pictures by following the link as the scales are for sale on our eBay website, the details of the workmanship is stunning. This is a product that was designed, built and made to last.

So sometimes, hunting for something else, leads you to another interesting find. This scale will make a great addition to someone's interior design. Filled with potpouri, properly balanced of course, is just one application. A stunning visual artifact from the 1800's, even though it's not a Rare First Edition, it is in fact a valuable and rare antique as many of these scales got tossed, melted or sold for scrap metal.

What Makes a Rare Book, Rare?

What makes a rare book, rare? Good question and here are some hints as to finding out just how rare your book might be. Rare books are not always about price, odd as that may sound. You can have a modern first edition signed by Rowling that will sell for $30,000 and a First Edition Incunabula printed in 1478 selling for $15,000. Nearly 420 plus years of age difference but yet the more rare incunabula may be priced well below the modern first edition. Happens all the time. So the bottom line is that price does not always indicate 'rareness'.

Here are some ways you can find out about the price of your rare book and get some indication as to its rarity. There are a number of very good bookseller associations that provide online searching for free, mainly because it is a form of advertising for booksellers to you, the potential book buyer and customer. The booksellers that are members all must have stores where there books, especially their rare books and rare ephemera can be purchased by the 'walk in trade' or their rare books are sold online. Why? Well many of the world's libraries are connected to ILAB, ABE and Alibris so when a librarian does a search on the global database of books owned by all the libraries, they have the option of clicking one of these links and finding out if the book is availble, from whom and how much the rare book sells for and how many copies are availble of this rare book online. Whether the book is a first edition, signed Rowling book selling for $30,000 or a rare incunabula, selling for $15,000. You will be using the same databases that rare book rooms in libraries use to acquire books in the open market.

Just click on these links and a new page will open up for you.

They are:

Advanced Book Exchange

Alibris

Biblion (UK)

International League of Antiquarian Booksellers

Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America

You will notice that on all the sites there is an advanced search option, I suggest that you use this and provide a description of the book such as author, title (if the title is too long, shorten it), year of publication (usually from when to when dates) and then finally publisher. If your book doesn't show up, don't fret and it doesn't mean that it is rare, it only means that none of the dealers have the books in stock.

So what makes a rare book rare? An incunabula (printed before 1500), where there may only be a handfull of copies in the world can actually sell well below the price of a modern first edition. Again, price does NOT an indicator of Rarity of a Book. Booksellers and rare book dealers tend to specialize in areas of interest and some focus on building an expertise in particular rare book areas of collecting, selling and buying. A combination of demand, limited supply and book quality all make up the condition known as a 'rare book'. So don't just put your book up for auction on eBay, if you think you have a rare book, ask someone to give you an appraisal or if you want to sell it, ask a dealer to sell it for you!

Heritage Auctions Rare Americana

We will keep this short and to the point. We are listing a number of very rare americana items, ephemera and rare books at the Heritage Auction site.You can view and bid on my entire consignment in auction #6043 at thefollowing link: http://historical.HA.com/common/search_items.php?Sale_No=6043&Consignor_No=59&type=friend-consignorlive-notice&FC=0 You can cut and paste this link and it will take you directly to the items but hurry, auction ends today!

All the best,

Richard Gabriel
Owner
Calix Books
#281
505 Paradise Rd.
Swampscott, MA 01907
781 477 9485 Phone
781 477 9484 FAX
http://www.calixbooks.com

Argentine Author Prices for his Rare Books

We were struck by the prices of rare signed first edition books of the author Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (wow what a mouthful). Jorge's rare books on Advanced Book Exchange vary in price and quality from the low hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. Just to demonstrate the flexible antiquarian book market, we put these direct links for you to look at these books and listings. But first a little bit about our esteemed author taken from Wikipedia, an invaluable resource for all us book hounds, bark, bark...

Although we don't have any of this author's works, we have many others and you can visit us by clicking his esteemed picture, doesn't he look like someone you know???

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (August 24, 1899 – June 14, 1986), best known as Jorge Luis Borges (Spanish pronunciation: ['xorxe 'lwis 'borxes], try that after a few rum and cokes...), was an Argentine writer, essayist, and poet born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland  where he attended school and traveled to Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library (Biblioteca Nacional) and professor of Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first International Publishers' Prize, the Prix Formentor. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1986.

His work embraces the "chaos that rules the world and the character of unreality in all literature." His most famous books, Ficciones (1944) and The Aleph (1949), are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes: dreams, labyrinths, libraries, fictional writers and works, religion, God. His works have contributed significantly to the genre of magical realism. Scholars have noted that Borges's progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination since "poets, like the blind, can see in the dark". The poems of his late period dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Luís de Camões, and Virgil.

His international fame was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the "Latin American Boom" and the success of Gabriel García Márquez's Cien Años de Soledad. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists."

Book Number 1: 

Book Number 2:

Book Number 3:

Book Number 4:

Book Number 5:

Book Number 6:

 

 

Rare Books Understanding What Makes them Rare

Rare Books are not just ordinary books, they are rare, making them unique sometimes like a one of a kind painting or more like a painting theme that was painted by the artist more than once (if there is more than one copy). The parts of a book or components, have not changed and today we just don't think about the 'parts' of a book. A book is a book is a book. All old books were, prior to the industrialization in England and Europe, were made by hand but it should be said that the original assembly line for not only making the printing or the writing (prior to the printing press) was first developed in the book industry. Ford did not have anything on Anton Koberger who not only held the first 'book fair' in Europe but became wealthy printing, binding and distributing his books, his competitors books and he was also selling 'old books' across Europe. Koberger is undoubtably one of my personal favorite printers. Not only were his papers well made (those made in Germany), some of them today are still stiff, crisp and show an aged brilliance. Not to mention his type and the general overall construction and composition of his books. The capstone was his Liber Chronocarium a tome of some immense proportions even by todays standards. Copies of the Liber both in Latin and German can be found readily available and will set you back about $80,000 plus. So what makes a book both rare and desirable to collectors or for that matter, someone who wants to put a part of their future investment that they can actually hold in their own hands (its hard to hold electronic bits and bytes)? Good question.

First, look at these two examples, both from Michelle P. Brown's excellent book entitled "Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms" it is available in paperback and not only gives you terms but wonderful and colorful descriptions and examples of these very early and astounding books.

 

Several things you will note on this very old and rare book is that it has metal 'bosses' on the cover and that is because in libraries of old, most books were laid down and they did not stand them up as we do today. The corner metal pieces were to help protect the book as well. The sewing of a rare book is nestled into the 'Head band and End Band' (starting with the Head and ending at the End) and the ridges along the spine are the extra sewing bands that hold the book together.

Because of rats, mice and book worms (which love to eat paper and wood) the books were constructed around a 'hardy' construction of wooden boards, strong sewing thread and tough leather, all put together by hand and the binder often used 'old vellum' manuscript strips to sew the book together and hold the entire piece. It is odd that sometimes the 'manuscript' scraps themselves are quite rare even in their partial condition. You will note the 'pegging', this holds the sewn thread to the wooden boards and the entire unit is 'glued' usually with 'wheat glue' and 'rabbit glue'. The marks on the binding are often unique and always tell us a story about the book. When you have the opportunity to hold an Anton Koberger book in your hands that is in good condition and has not been restored, it is amazing to think that the book was made over 500 years ago. So what makes a book rare? Well they certainly are not making books this way today and they aren't making anymore of them. 

Lucrezia Marinella Poet Writer Defender of Women! Rare Books

Lucrezia Marinella Vacca /Marinelli (1571-1653) A rare and wonderful book available now on our online at Calixbooks. This rare book is the only one we have located. Only one library in the world has a copy of this extremely rare book.

Lucrezia Marinella Vacca /Marinelli (1571-1653)

We know more about the publishing history of Lucrezia Marinella's works than we do about her life. When other women were publishing anonymously or under a pseudonym, Marinella's name was on most of her books and she was known by all Venice as the author of the rest. She apparently used the feminine form of her last name; some editors have used the family form, "Marinelli." Lucrezia was the daughter of a Venetian physician who wrote works on medicine (two on women's health) and on philosophy. We know nothing of her mother nor of when her father died do (we know that he was dead by 1600). Someone saw to it that Lucrezia was given an education that included philosophy and classical as well as vernacular literature. At some point she married a physician, Girolamo Vacca, and had at least two children, a son and daughter. When Marinella was 24 years old, her first work was published, La colomba sacra, poema eroico (The holy dove, a heroic poem), a biographical epic in ottava rima on an early Christian martyr. Her next publication was the Nobilta et l'eccellenza delle donne, co' difetti et mancamenti degli uomoni (The nobility and excellences of women, and the defects and vices of men), printed in 1600 and enlarged in 1601. Between 1603 and 1606 six more works were published (although some appear to have been written earlier): a heroic poem and a prose work on Mary; poems on Francis of Assisi and on Justina (another early Christian martyr); a collection of Marinella's sonnets and madrigals, and a pastoral verse novel, Arcadia felice. After 1606 there is a gap of 12 years before her next publications --- an allegory based on the story of Cupid and Psyche, and a poetic biography of Catherine of Siena --- and then another 11 years before she published in 1635 what historians of Italian literature consider her masterpiece, L'Enrico overo Bisantio conquistato (Henry or Byzantium gained). We don't know the connection between these gaps and her life as a wife and mother. By the 1590s, the Roman influence that we call "Baroque" had come to Venice. It grew, in part, out of the Catholic Church's need to reach out to people, to instruct and to arouse them more directly than it had done before. For literature, the result was an emphasis on vernacular writing with a strong emotional appeal. All of Marinella's writing reflects the Baroque, but in different ways and from a feminine perspective. She usually wrote in the heroic verse form, but sometimes in a combination of verse and the "poetic prose" that she saw as capable of the same elevation as poetry. Many of Marinella's books were lives of religious figures, but almost always about women and then always with the emphasis on their heroism rather than on more passive virtues. She wrote of the heroic resistance of the women Columba and Justina; her book on Catherine of Siena was on the "heroic deeds and marvelous life"; her life of Mary (apparently the most successful during her lifetime) was on Mary as "empress of the universe"; in a later edition of her early poem on Francis, Clare of Assisi's "glorious passion" receives equal billing. Her secular writing also fused the extravagance of the popular chivalric tales and heroic epics with a Christian, but feminine, view of morality. One satirically allegorizes the myth of Cupid and Psyche as a conflict between body and soul; another is a pastoral verse drama that makes fun of human love. L'Enrico overo Bisantio conquistato is an epic in the style of Torquato Tasso's La Gerusalemme liberata, but with stronger, more self-reliant women. To date, the only work of Marinella's that has been translated into English is part of her Nobilta et l'eccellenza delle donne. It differs from her other writings in being a polemical treatise, a genre in which extravagant statement and personal attack were acceptable. Forty-five years later, Marinella would write Essortationi alle donne et a gli altri (Exhortations to women and others), in which she would qualify some of the more extreme views expressed in Nobilta. But in 1600, Marinella would say whatever she needed to say in order to refute the misogynist statements of earlier writers, particularly the treatise of Giuseppe Passi, who had published Dei donneschi defetti (The defects of women) in 1599.

Rare Ephemera Feminist Actress and Racist Publisher!

A rare ephemera document is listed for auction at our Ebay store. If you are interesed, click below:

Feminist

Izetta Jewel Miller, died Nov. 27, 1978 age 94 a former actress (President Wilson's favorite actress) and early feminist who twice ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate from West Virginia in the early 1920's and later moved to New York, she was a Democrat. She also became regional director of women's professional projects of the WPA. The letter is addressed to A. A. Beauchamp and he was a publisher of works sometimes for the Anti-Christian Science group and other fractional groups, including the Atheist movement in New England. Beauchamp publishing of Winchester, Massachusetts. He lived at 605 Boylston Stree, Boston, MA.

Extremist views often make strange bedfellows. The racist movement began much earlier, albeit it started as a 'genealogical' quest and historical one in the 1600's but with Totten's and Hine's labors  in the late 19th and early 20th century, that created three centers for future British-Israel growth in America: the Northeast, where the two had lectured and published; the Midwest, where their teachings struck a responsive chord among some evangelical Protestants; and ultimately, in the Far West, where many evangelicals had moved. In the Northeast itself, Anglo-Israelism continued to grow after Totten's death in 1909. A major force in nurturing the movement was a Boston publisher, A. A. Beauchamp. Beauchamp took over Totten's role as the principal Anglo-Israel publisher in America. Our Race, Totten's periodical, had ceased publication in 1915. In 1918, Beachamp introduced his own monthly, the Watchman of Israel, devoted to demonstrating that "the English-speaking peoples of today are the lineal descendants of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel and must fulfill in these latter days the responsibilities decreed for them through patriarchs and prophets of Israel." Beachamp's magazine was a collection of brief and non-technical religious essays, together with bits of news about British-Israel activities in the United States, Canada and Great Britain. Beauchamp also became the publisher of choice for Anglo-Israel writers in North America, including such older figures as J. H. Allen, for whom Beauchamp published a string of books and rising youner writers such as the Canadian W. G. MacKendrick, who became a significant figure in the 1920's and 1930's under his nom de plume, "The Roadbuilder" (writing was a sideline of MacKendrick's paving business). Beauchamp's activities made him central point of contact for the dispersed and fragmented American British-Israelites.