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In the 16th century guild regulations forbade women to train as printers or start presses, but they could inherit and run printing houses as widows. Charlotte Guillard (d. 1557) worked at the important Soleil d’Or press in Paris from 1502 until her…

Tonight will be the full moon. Volvelles are paper or parchment devices - movable charts - used to make calculations, usually of the movements of the sun and moon. This one is in “Noui annuli astronomici,” by Ioannes Dryander, printed at Marburg in…

A selection of bindings, 15th - 19th centuries:

1. In memoriam, Alfred Tennyson, printed and bound at the Roycroft artisan community in East Aurora, NY, 1898

2. Sir Perecyvelle of Gales, printed by William Morris at his Kelmscott Press, 1895,…

We continue a week devoted to the arts of book making and book ownership with a selection of bookplates. Ex libris = From the books (library).

The first is a visual pun on the name of Alfred Church Lane, Pearson Professor of Geology & Minerology,…

#marbledmonday

Elephants! From A New History of Ethiopia: being a full and accurate description of the kingdom of Abessinia: vulgarly, though erroneously called the empire of Prester John / by Hiob Ludolf, printed for Samuel Smith, bookseller, at the Prince's Arms…

How was it put together? Is everything there? Questions for anyone who studies an early printed book, even an online digital copy. If you like puzzles, early printed books may be for you.

Over centuries of use, misuse, vandalism, repair, and…

Miniatures from a facsimile of "Chirugia," a 14th C. Latin translation of a textbook on surgery by Arab physician Abu al-Qasim Khalaf Ibn Abbas al-Zahrawi. Court physician to Western Umayyad Caliph al-Hakam II (961-976 CE), Al-Zahrawi combined Greek…

Today on the autumn equinox we showcase the work of Margaret Bryan, an English schoolteacher, who in 1797 published "A Compendious System of Astronomy." Bryan taught girls at locations in or near London. Beyond that, and three educational…

In 1838 Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped slavery in Maryland with assistance from his soon-to-be wife, a free Black woman, Anna Murray. They settled in Massachusetts, a center of Abolitionist effort. Douglass quickly became a leading orator,…