Book collecting in the wild
Hi everyone!
I’m back with another book-related post. Last weekend I visited the Deventer Boekenmarkt (the Deventer Book Market), which takes place in Deventer once a year and is apparently the largest book market in Europe. I’m willing to believe that statement, because the market is seriously huge. Half the city centre is covered in stalls and you can find almost any type of book you can imagine there - comics, children’s books, leather-bound tomes from the 18th century, popular novels from last year, art books, even pages from Medieval manuscripts if you’re lucky. Nothing too high-end though, since the market is outdoors and most stalls only accept cash, but there’s still more than enough to choose from. This was my second time visiting, and both times I only managed to go through about half the stalls before all books started to look the same. And before I ran out of money, that too. But it's ok. The market is just amazing. Imagine being with 120.000 other book lovers, who are all friendly and enthusiastic, and having a city all to yourselves. Isn't that great? If any of you ever has the chance to go, take it. It's just such a great experience. And there are plenty of English books for sale as well, so you don't have to learn Dutch first.
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to share my purchases here. Mostly because I’m proud of what I bought and want to show it off. But if any of you happens to be interested in seeing what a stranger on the other side of the worlds spends her money on, that would be an added bonus.
Purchasing policy
Before we dive into the good stuff, I wanted to point out that I’m quite strict when it comes to buying books. I love books and know quite a lot about them, so I won’t settle for just anything. A book has to be really something before I’ll consider to add it to my collection. It needs to have an interesting binding, be printed on beautiful paper, or have gorgeous illustrations. Counter-intuitive as it may sound, the text doesn’t really matter to me. It helps if I like it, but it’s not the deciding factor. I mean, if I merely wanted to read the book, I’d get it from the library, you know. No need to waste valuable shelf space on it.
The big exception to this rule is non-fiction. Non-fiction is great, especially art books. Those I do get mostly for their content and therefore I care less about how they look. Luckily, art books are often good quality and rarely hard on the eye, so they fit into my strict purchasing policy just fine.
The question of money
But don’t you need a lot of money if you only want to buy special books? Surprisingly, no. There are many reasons why a beautiful, good quality book can be affordable. Maybe it’s not rare. Maybe it’s a binding of an obscure text that nobody cares about. Maybe it’s written in a foreign language. Maybe the seller has been sitting on that book for years and has lowered the price because he really wants to get rid of it. Or maybe the seller doesn’t know the book is anything special and has therefore priced it too low. That doesn't happen very often though, not when the seller is a professional. The fourth reason, however, that the seller lowers the price because he wants to get rid of it, that happens all the time. Especially at the Deventer Boekenmarkt :D
My budget was €50,-, which isn’t a lot considering I mostly go to the antiquarian book stalls, where prices can easily go into the triple digits. However, it was more than enough for me. I walked out of that market with a few purchases I’m very happy with, and without feeling I missed out on anything because my budget was too low. So no, unless you're only interested Medieval manuscripts, or books signed by Abraham Lincoln, you don't necessarily need a lot of money for book collecting.
My purchases
Marbled paper
The first item I bought was not a book; it was paper. Leave it to me to walk into a book fair and come back with paper. Well, I regret nothing. I've seen a lot of marbled paper in my life, but none of it was as lovely as this. It's so beautiful! I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. The seller had quite a few sheets of this and I must have spent at least ten minutes going through the pile, staring starry-eyed at every sheet. I seriously considered buying the lot, but that would have cost me my whole budget for the day, so I ended up picking just two. The first one is actually not paper, but bookbinder's linen. I've never seen marbled bookbinder's linen before, so I had to get it. The blue one is a very sturdy paper and I picked that one for its intriguing, minimalistic pattern. They're both gorgeous. So unique. And so skillfully done with the patterns fading into the edges. I'm bummed I forgot the name of the artist, or I would have followed her on all her social media pages. I hope I'll find her again one day. And in the meantime I'll be making a few books with her paper, once I find the courage to cut it.
Price for two A2 sized, hand-marbled sheets: €10,-
Introduction to Basketmaking
My second purchase was this book called Introduction to Basketmaking by Lyn Edwards. I recently realised how versatile a craft basketweaving actually is and have been fascinated by it ever since. It's insane how many different things you can make with the technique. I'm still pondering on all the ways I might be able to combine it with bookbinding and have some very exciting ideas for it. So yeah, when I saw this book, I knew I wanted to take it home. It's a really nice book, with lots of beautiful pictures, so I'm very happy to have it in my non-fiction collection.
Price: €7,50
Maud by Alfred Tennyson
Now my next purchase is the one that really made this trip for me. It's the perfect example of a book that fits into my purchasing policy. You might know that most book collectors have a 'type'. They usually collect a specific kind of book. Maybe they only collect books by a certain author, or about a certain topic, or from a certain time period. Anything goes. My type seems to be 'aesthetically pleasing books', but I've recently started to realise that what I really mean by that is private press books. Oh my god, I could rave about private press books for hours. But to keep it short, a private press is a publishing house run by just a few people, usually artists, that creates books for artistic rather than commercial reasons. The 'private press movement' started around 1890 as an answer to all the ugly, uninspired, mass-produced books from the rest the 19th century. The artists running those private presses wanted to make 'the ideal book', and thought they could do that by doing everything in the process by hand. They made the paper by hand, printed by hand and bound the books by hand. Obviously, that takes a lot of time, so they rarely made more than 200 copies of the same book, which means all their books are rare and unique and beautiful and ugh. I'm drooling just thinking about it. Seriously though, doesn't this whole pivate press movement sound like bibliophilic heaven? It sure does to me. I love private press books, but they're not that easy to find and can be quite expensive, so you can imagine my excitement when I found one, and an affordable one at that, at the Deventer Boekenmarkt :D.
I found it at an odd little stall and was immediately drawn to it because of its unusual design. When I was leaving through it, I saw that it was probably hand-printed, hand-bound and that the paper seemed to be hand-made, so I became really excited. I still had my doubts though, mostly because I don't like making a bigger purchase without being able to do some research first, so I walked away. But I couldn't get the book out of my head, so I returned and leaved through it some more until I saw the watermark on the last page. It was perfectly placed and completely intact, so I realised that whoever had made this book, must have known what they were doing, and that's what gave me the final push to buy the book. Yes, you read that correctly: it wasn't the text that made me buy this, nor the binding, but the placement of a watermark... Us book enthusiasts are a weird lot, that's all I can say about that.
I've studied the book some more in the past few days and discovered that it was published in 1900 by the Roycroft Press. Roycroft was a community of artists and artisans in the state of New York, and was founded by this figure called Elbert Hubbard (doesn't that name sound like it could be from a HP book?). I still have to read more about the Roycrofters, but they seem very interesting so far. That's one of the things I love the most about collecting antiquarian books, that the books themselves often have such a fascinating story. Discovering that story is always such fun! And the more you know about books, the more you will discover. It's incredibly gratifying.
Price: €25,-
The private press book. See how it looks unfinished because the leather wasn't turned around the edges of the boards and glued down? The friend I was with thought it was very ugly, but I think it's great!
The all-important watermark, with the Roycroft logo.
The Ideal Book
And my last purchase of the day was another book. I saw it and bought it without even thinking about it, even though it made me go a few euros over budget. It's called Het Ideale Boek: honderd jaar private press in Nederland, 1910-2010. Or in English: The Ideal Book: a hundred years of private presses in the Netherlands, 1910-2010. See? There was just no way I was going to leave it behind after having bought a private press book only minutes before. Sometimes a coincidence is just too perfect. I'm so happy with this book. It's absolutely fascinating so far, and I haven't even finished the introduction yet. I can't wait to get to the chapter about collecting private press books, to see if I made a good decision when I bought Maud.
Price: €10,-
And that, friends, concludes my Deventer buying spree. Another long post about books, but I hope you enjoyed reading it. Have a good day!
This entry was originally posted at https://antuhsa.dreamwidth.org/5563.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I’m back with another book-related post. Last weekend I visited the Deventer Boekenmarkt (the Deventer Book Market), which takes place in Deventer once a year and is apparently the largest book market in Europe. I’m willing to believe that statement, because the market is seriously huge. Half the city centre is covered in stalls and you can find almost any type of book you can imagine there - comics, children’s books, leather-bound tomes from the 18th century, popular novels from last year, art books, even pages from Medieval manuscripts if you’re lucky. Nothing too high-end though, since the market is outdoors and most stalls only accept cash, but there’s still more than enough to choose from. This was my second time visiting, and both times I only managed to go through about half the stalls before all books started to look the same. And before I ran out of money, that too. But it's ok. The market is just amazing. Imagine being with 120.000 other book lovers, who are all friendly and enthusiastic, and having a city all to yourselves. Isn't that great? If any of you ever has the chance to go, take it. It's just such a great experience. And there are plenty of English books for sale as well, so you don't have to learn Dutch first.
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to share my purchases here. Mostly because I’m proud of what I bought and want to show it off. But if any of you happens to be interested in seeing what a stranger on the other side of the worlds spends her money on, that would be an added bonus.
Purchasing policy
Before we dive into the good stuff, I wanted to point out that I’m quite strict when it comes to buying books. I love books and know quite a lot about them, so I won’t settle for just anything. A book has to be really something before I’ll consider to add it to my collection. It needs to have an interesting binding, be printed on beautiful paper, or have gorgeous illustrations. Counter-intuitive as it may sound, the text doesn’t really matter to me. It helps if I like it, but it’s not the deciding factor. I mean, if I merely wanted to read the book, I’d get it from the library, you know. No need to waste valuable shelf space on it.
The big exception to this rule is non-fiction. Non-fiction is great, especially art books. Those I do get mostly for their content and therefore I care less about how they look. Luckily, art books are often good quality and rarely hard on the eye, so they fit into my strict purchasing policy just fine.
The question of money
But don’t you need a lot of money if you only want to buy special books? Surprisingly, no. There are many reasons why a beautiful, good quality book can be affordable. Maybe it’s not rare. Maybe it’s a binding of an obscure text that nobody cares about. Maybe it’s written in a foreign language. Maybe the seller has been sitting on that book for years and has lowered the price because he really wants to get rid of it. Or maybe the seller doesn’t know the book is anything special and has therefore priced it too low. That doesn't happen very often though, not when the seller is a professional. The fourth reason, however, that the seller lowers the price because he wants to get rid of it, that happens all the time. Especially at the Deventer Boekenmarkt :D
My budget was €50,-, which isn’t a lot considering I mostly go to the antiquarian book stalls, where prices can easily go into the triple digits. However, it was more than enough for me. I walked out of that market with a few purchases I’m very happy with, and without feeling I missed out on anything because my budget was too low. So no, unless you're only interested Medieval manuscripts, or books signed by Abraham Lincoln, you don't necessarily need a lot of money for book collecting.
My purchases
Marbled paper
The first item I bought was not a book; it was paper. Leave it to me to walk into a book fair and come back with paper. Well, I regret nothing. I've seen a lot of marbled paper in my life, but none of it was as lovely as this. It's so beautiful! I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. The seller had quite a few sheets of this and I must have spent at least ten minutes going through the pile, staring starry-eyed at every sheet. I seriously considered buying the lot, but that would have cost me my whole budget for the day, so I ended up picking just two. The first one is actually not paper, but bookbinder's linen. I've never seen marbled bookbinder's linen before, so I had to get it. The blue one is a very sturdy paper and I picked that one for its intriguing, minimalistic pattern. They're both gorgeous. So unique. And so skillfully done with the patterns fading into the edges. I'm bummed I forgot the name of the artist, or I would have followed her on all her social media pages. I hope I'll find her again one day. And in the meantime I'll be making a few books with her paper, once I find the courage to cut it.
Price for two A2 sized, hand-marbled sheets: €10,-
Introduction to Basketmaking
My second purchase was this book called Introduction to Basketmaking by Lyn Edwards. I recently realised how versatile a craft basketweaving actually is and have been fascinated by it ever since. It's insane how many different things you can make with the technique. I'm still pondering on all the ways I might be able to combine it with bookbinding and have some very exciting ideas for it. So yeah, when I saw this book, I knew I wanted to take it home. It's a really nice book, with lots of beautiful pictures, so I'm very happy to have it in my non-fiction collection.
Price: €7,50
Maud by Alfred Tennyson
Now my next purchase is the one that really made this trip for me. It's the perfect example of a book that fits into my purchasing policy. You might know that most book collectors have a 'type'. They usually collect a specific kind of book. Maybe they only collect books by a certain author, or about a certain topic, or from a certain time period. Anything goes. My type seems to be 'aesthetically pleasing books', but I've recently started to realise that what I really mean by that is private press books. Oh my god, I could rave about private press books for hours. But to keep it short, a private press is a publishing house run by just a few people, usually artists, that creates books for artistic rather than commercial reasons. The 'private press movement' started around 1890 as an answer to all the ugly, uninspired, mass-produced books from the rest the 19th century. The artists running those private presses wanted to make 'the ideal book', and thought they could do that by doing everything in the process by hand. They made the paper by hand, printed by hand and bound the books by hand. Obviously, that takes a lot of time, so they rarely made more than 200 copies of the same book, which means all their books are rare and unique and beautiful and ugh. I'm drooling just thinking about it. Seriously though, doesn't this whole pivate press movement sound like bibliophilic heaven? It sure does to me. I love private press books, but they're not that easy to find and can be quite expensive, so you can imagine my excitement when I found one, and an affordable one at that, at the Deventer Boekenmarkt :D.
I found it at an odd little stall and was immediately drawn to it because of its unusual design. When I was leaving through it, I saw that it was probably hand-printed, hand-bound and that the paper seemed to be hand-made, so I became really excited. I still had my doubts though, mostly because I don't like making a bigger purchase without being able to do some research first, so I walked away. But I couldn't get the book out of my head, so I returned and leaved through it some more until I saw the watermark on the last page. It was perfectly placed and completely intact, so I realised that whoever had made this book, must have known what they were doing, and that's what gave me the final push to buy the book. Yes, you read that correctly: it wasn't the text that made me buy this, nor the binding, but the placement of a watermark... Us book enthusiasts are a weird lot, that's all I can say about that.
I've studied the book some more in the past few days and discovered that it was published in 1900 by the Roycroft Press. Roycroft was a community of artists and artisans in the state of New York, and was founded by this figure called Elbert Hubbard (doesn't that name sound like it could be from a HP book?). I still have to read more about the Roycrofters, but they seem very interesting so far. That's one of the things I love the most about collecting antiquarian books, that the books themselves often have such a fascinating story. Discovering that story is always such fun! And the more you know about books, the more you will discover. It's incredibly gratifying.
Price: €25,-
The private press book. See how it looks unfinished because the leather wasn't turned around the edges of the boards and glued down? The friend I was with thought it was very ugly, but I think it's great!
The all-important watermark, with the Roycroft logo.
The Ideal Book
And my last purchase of the day was another book. I saw it and bought it without even thinking about it, even though it made me go a few euros over budget. It's called Het Ideale Boek: honderd jaar private press in Nederland, 1910-2010. Or in English: The Ideal Book: a hundred years of private presses in the Netherlands, 1910-2010. See? There was just no way I was going to leave it behind after having bought a private press book only minutes before. Sometimes a coincidence is just too perfect. I'm so happy with this book. It's absolutely fascinating so far, and I haven't even finished the introduction yet. I can't wait to get to the chapter about collecting private press books, to see if I made a good decision when I bought Maud.
Price: €10,-
And that, friends, concludes my Deventer buying spree. Another long post about books, but I hope you enjoyed reading it. Have a good day!
This entry was originally posted at https://antuhsa.dreamwidth.org/5563.html. Please comment there using OpenID.