Muriel Craddock, 97, with daughter Kay in their family book storein Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Joseph Feil.Muriel Craddock, at age 97 1/2 surely the oldest living rare bookseller in the world, has announced the re-opening of Kay Craddock Antiquarian Bookseller, her family business in Melbourne, Australia.Muriel, known as the Queen of antiquarian booksellers, and her late husband, Les, established the business forty-four years ago as The Treasure Chest. As the business grew it morphed into the Bourke Street Bookshop. When daughter Kay - who started working in the shop when she was sixteen - assumed management of the bookshop in 1990,...
European Rare Book Seller Exhibits at Book Fair In Dubai
Booth at the 2009 Sharjah International Book Fairin Dubai, November 11-21, 2009Antiquariaat Forum, an ILAB, Netherlands-based dealer of rare books, prints, maps, manuscripts and drawings, is the only rare book dealer exhibiting at the Sharjah World Book Fair in Dubai.According to Corstiaan S, Hesselink, Antiquariat Forum’s owner, affluent collectors, universities, libraries, and museums in the region are open to spending large sums to acquire rare, antiquarian books. Hesselink brought only a small selection of books, wisely keyed to regional interests. A volume on falconry from the 16th century, priced at €165,000, has already attracted several serious buyers, according to Hesselink. Another...
“Legitimate Contender For World’s Most Expensive Book” (Not)
“Legitimate Contender For World’s Most Expensive Book” ?(Twelfth edition)“Hiya kids, hiya, hiya, hiya!”Froggy, the croaking - and long-croaked - gremlin, has risen from the graveyard of 50s television to pluck his magic twanger once more and bedevil a hapless victim. This time, a deluded "rare book dealer" is his prey.Who’s the poor sap? Why it’s Milliondollarauctions123, aka Ebay’s most egregious example of sub-amateur rare bookseller, who declares, after stating his headline above:“Far more important than $30.8 million Codex Leicester.”A page from daVinci's Codex LeicesterThe book in question? Alfred Thayer Mahan's The Influence of Seapower Upon History 1660-1783. What’s the asking...
How To Read An Expensive Rare Book (A Cautionary Tale)
One word: Carefully.No, two words: Very carefully.Upon receipt of the three-hundred year old rare book you just paid $22,000 for (but haven't yet sent the check), inspect it with delicacy. Examine the hinges (inner joints) by gently - and only partially - opening the upper board and then the lower board. Please do not wildly open the book as if it’s the Yellow Pages and you’re frantic to find a plumber.Hinges and joints firm, as advertised by the dealer, with only three small distressed spots along the upper hinge? Excellent!Now, what better way to celebrate your new acquisition than by...
Michael Suarez, New Director of UV’s Rare Book School, Wows With Lecture on Plate-Subscription Books
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los AngelesMichael Suarez, S.J., new Director of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, presented the Fifth Annual Kenneth Karmiole Lecture on the History of the Book Trade at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles on Saturday, November 7th to an enraptured audience.One of the Reading Rooms at the Clark LibraryHis subject, Learned Book Illustrations, their Patrons, and the Vagaries of the Trade in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England, might, in the wrong hands, have held the potential to desiccate cortexes. But Michael Suarez, a Jesuit priest who received his doctorate...