#fine binding

finished Vita Nuova art nouveau-style fine binding!

peacock blue goatskin with crimson goatskin gold tooled-edge letters, gold tooled swirling lines, duck eggshell panel silhouette, crimson leather headbands, and hand-marbled paper (made by me)

The living world: a complete natural history of the world's creatures by J.W. Buel was first published in 1891-- this book looks like an absolute delight, the kind of book one could get lost in for hours.

It seems harder to find such books being published today. I think in someways a book like this could fill the role that surfing the web and watching videos do today.

Some lovely Victorian-ish Era fashion, in a beautiful album from a relative.

I'm fascinated by the little sleeve ruffle in the third picture.

Happy Birthday (or rather, day of christening) to Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith (1723-1790), author of The Wealth of Nations! 

Adam Smith poured over a decade of research into his classic work that laid the foundation for the discipline of modern economics. The Wealth of Nations (1776) introduced the concept of absolute advantage and challenged mercantilism (wealth comes from maximizing exports and minimizing imports) and physiocracy (wealth comes from physical land) by arguing that wealth may be built through free-market capitalism. Smith’s magnum opus shaped the terms of debate for both his proponents and critics for centuries after its publication. The Wealth of Nations comes in second place for the most-cited pre-1950 economic texts (behind Karl Marx’s Das Kapital). And even the leading modern social science publication Das Kapital : Kritik der politischen Öekonomie (1867), is largely Marx’s answer to Smith’s Wealth of Nations. 

Much to printer William Strahan’s pleasant surprise, the first edition of The Wealth of Nations sold out in six months. He didn’t expect a work that “requires much thought and reflection” to be so popular. Based on the bookplate, our first edition copy was likely snagged by a member of the Treffry family that hails from Cornwall, England. 

If nothing else, we hope you enjoy the vibrant morocco labels (see photo at the top) and the spotted polished calf that embellish an otherwise dense (even by late eighteenth-century standards) tome of economic theory. 

Listed by Peter Harrington: This lovely copy of The Wind in the Willows was printed by The Limited Editions Club in 1940 as a limited edition of 2,020 copies of which this is number 1,991 signed by the designer Bruce Rogers. Rackham illustrated the 1940 Limited Editions Club edition which ended up being the last book he illustrated before his death in 1939; it is from this edition that the present was reprinted.