Shelf Conversation: Difficulties and Device

Two pressed together by relativity and religion. One on the left, reserved and waiting for the other to speak first. The other to the right so confident and well rehearsed. A rather fitting match then.

Device begins, quickly offering a thought about the steady weather and assistance should the Faculties feel a chill.

Faculties is not one for words today and with a sigh contends "The temperature is fine enough, I'm not sure that you have a blanket to offer."

Shelf Conversation: The Language in Bloom

Whispering, remembering a quiet path. Two friends might walk and share a word or two. Further down the path, a nettle maybe catching at the skin. The pain is just enough to demonstrate the consequence of a daydream, wandering, not watching where you tread. Wild justice for the petals that we tread beneath or feet.

"The buzzing bee, the breeze, I'm sure they find humour in each other and speak when human steps depart." Said the left.

"The breeze will take a summer hat and send it tumbling ahead. Then the bees and flowers laugh at these strange visitors." Said the right.

Shelf Conversation: Nietzsche and Baudelaire

A quiet conversation about decadence.The Idols and the Le Spleen. There is much to agree upon here.  The fine fabric of Paris is a veil, the struggle to identify a truth and somewhere in our pages we find each other. And yet the philosopher is not gentle in his persuasion. 

"A cold sarcasm against beautiful words", said the Nietzsche to the left. 

"The faint notes of an exquisite taste" said Baudelaire to the right, gazing across the aisle.

Yet each have enough consideration for humanity to lend a few words.

Blumfield Township Library

Blumfield, our Blumfield, the one with the Township Library, is located in Michigan. It is not to be confused with Bloomfield where my Australian cousin Barbara lives, who is just over for a short visit from her Northern Queensland Bloomfield, not too far from Cooktown, her Bloomfield having two "O"s and crocodiles and is, so she tells us, generally wet and warm and tropical. But the confusing similarity of Blum and Bloom made our find in Panorama City so exciting and so intriguing.

Blumfield Township (Michigan) was a small community of German emigrants who left their fatherland after the failure of the March Revolution in 1848. They have been called the Forty-Eighters and some say they had a certain influence on the development of the American Civil war and the Anti-Slavery movement.

"Bibliothek des Township Blumfield / Dieses Buch ist an den Director des Schul districts zurueckzuliefern am letzten Samstag eines jeden Monats. Der Empfaenger ist verantwortlich fuer jeden dem Buche zugefuegten Schaden waehrend er es in seinem besitze hat." 

Some Forty-Eighters made Blumfield their new home. Books furnish a home, libraries furnish a community. Those who founded a township in Michigan and gave it a German name, they would not leave their books behind. Because a community without a library is nothing, and a German community without German books is even less. The director of the school district serves as librarian, this makes it comparable to a school library. The books are intended to educate their children. They brought them to what was to become Blumfield and created a library. Today, nothing is left of this library except a few books which display this bookplate. A pretty strict regime of care and return transpires from the wording:

Library of the Township Blumfield / This book is to be returned to the director of the school district on the last Saturday of each month. The recipient is responsible for any damage done to the book while it is in his possession.

The German wording (Spechen Sie deutsch?) produces some anxiety, because the language already shows clear traces of Englification, it is already a little rusty and musty, not least because the printer works without Umlaute, there is talk of district and Township. On the other hand, the bookbinder in Detroit, who attaches his own label to the inside back cover, prints some English that has, to my ear, a distinct German ring: Bookbindery == Buchbinderei. (Buchbinder Saenger (Sanger) is listed in Detroit address books for 1855 and 1876)

Bookbindery by Ernst C Saenger, No 120 Fort Street, between Antoine and Hasting Str. All Orders Prompty Executed 

Library labels and bookbinder tickets are sweet little fellows. I was drawn to this book by the bright yellow labels. I considered removing them from this book and insert them into an album of similar ephemera. But a closer look taught me better: This book and its labels belong together and tell a story of emigration, of political and philosophical culture, of radical education and "bookbindery" in Michigan around 1860. In its pages the book provides a famous academic polemic about Christianity and science. Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft. Eine Streitschrift gegen Hofrath Rudolph Wagner in Göttingen. Carl Vogt, scientists and politician who engaged with Marx and Darwin, presents in its pages a radical materialist vision, according to which the brain excretes thoughts in much the same way in which the kidneys excrete urine. You would be hard pressed to find a book more incompatible with the tradition of Christian education decorated with library marking which points to a scholastic use. Materialist double strength poison approaching a school library somewhere in rural Michigan, that seems pretty remarkable. The book, with all its labels, which document its travels and the hopes which were placed in it a long time ago, is for sale on our website and offers a rare opportunity to hold in your hands the original object that once brought German radical thinking to the shores of Lake Huron and further afield.

Farewell E-Reader

A consideration appeared in the Cambridge Evening News this week. Falling sales of the E-Reader, rising sales of the book. We were asked our thoughts and gladly answered.

Bicycles and Gramophones

Sometimes over the weekend Laura meets one of those shellac records, those stiff fellows which need a proper gramophone to do their thing. And some of these come properly dressed in an old printed sleeve. And sometimes this sleeve becomes a source of puzzlement and wonder.

See what she found last month: Two distributors of records in the Leeds area who also advertise their bicycle business.

The Cycle Shop. Proprietor G Whiteley, Agent for Gilbert Gramophones. All the latest Records in Stock. Pedestal Gramophones. Table Grands. Motor Cycles, Cycles, Oils Accessories, Camping Outfits, Sports Good, Etc. 8 Well Street, Farsley, Leeds.

Arthur Marshall, Broadcast, Radio, Winner, Regal, Columbia, Zonophone, Parlophone, and Piccadilly Records. Electrical Engineers and Contractor. Gramophone and Cycle Dealer. 240, Town Street, Bramley, Leeds.


It seemed very strange to us that records and bicycles should get so close. Are these not very different kettles of fish? How come that the borderlines in the commercial universe are drawn so strangely?

The Gramophone Department of Exeter Cycle Works (www.peterice.com/exeter_nostalgia.htm)

Well, both are rotary objects, somehow. Could that be the reason?

After a little research it appears that the association of bicycles and gramophones is quite characteristic for the structure of the retail trade in advanced technologies around 1920. For instance, in 1910 Carlton Service issued a series of publications to assist the shopkeeper in advertising his business. One of these was entitled: Twelve Months Advertising for a Cycle-Dealer, including Gramophones, Baby Carriages, etc.

A little earlier, H G Wells in "The War in the Air" presents the fictional firm of Grubb & Smallways with a small fleet of bikes for hire, acting as agents for an obscure bicycle manufacturer, also offering repairs, a line of cheap gramophones, and a few musical boxes. In 1916, the US Commerce Report includes an inquiry from "a man in Siberia" interested to receive offers of bicycles, typewriters, gramophones, etc. And on 16 March 1921, Maurice Goldberg (27), a Gramophone & Cycle Dealer and the son of Abraham Goldberg, Cycle Dealer, marries the daughter of Rabbi Jacob Server at Brentnall Street Synagogue in Middlesbrough. Thank you Mr Google!

Norman Field's research into record labels in the period provides excellent examples for this close association of two rotary technologies. He documents how the Raleigh Cycle Co. of Nottingham acts as record publisher, issuing a record under their own imprint: Harry Fay renders, yes, A Cyclists Song. I should look forward to hearing this on Youtube...

Harry Fay, A Cyclist's Song

The best explanation for the surprising association of bicycles and gramophones comes via Norman Field from Frank Andrews, for whom Curry's Records "illustrate a largely forgotten aspect of the early British Gramophone Trade: viz., the 'Gramophone and Bicycle Shop'. They made excellent partners, for both trades were very seasonable. Those who could afford to do so, purchased bicycles in the summer, and phonographs, gramophones and records in the winter months." Curry's was probably the first 'chain' of these combined retail shops; they already had "Depots in Many Towns" as early as 1910. A century later, the nationwide chain of Curry's Discount Warehouses stand in the forefront, as the "UK's Foremost Electrical Retailer" is their byline.

Curry's Cycle Co and Curry's Gramophone Records as one. (http://www.normanfield.com/labelsr.htm)

But why would the bookseller worry? Perhaps the ease which which two new-fangled technologies shared the same showroom strikes us as we worry about the structure of the retail trade for a declining technology: books. As we worry about declining sales of real books, we at least take pleasure in understanding how tradespeople a hundred years ago dealt with their fickle public.

Rabbinic Bible

Rabbinic Bible or Mikraot Gedolot : These are the "Great Scriptures" of the Jewish religion, published together in a uniform format for the first time in early 16th century. Based on the first edition by Ben Hayyim, published by Bomberg in Venice in 1525, there have been a number of improved or enlarged editions through the ages. The nineteenth century saw one major project from Warsaw, where Yoel Levenzohn produced an edition in 12 Volumes between 1860 and 1866. (Wikipedia)

Our set is uniformly bound in 5 large and very nicely bound volumes. The binding is in excellent condition, somewhat overspecified perhaps, especially when compared with the more humble quality of paper and printing, produced in Poland, under difficult circumstances no doubt. The set proudly displays the arms of Cambridge University to front and spine.

Each volume also has a donation bookplate, which states that the set has been given, more than 100 years ago, to a Cambridge college by the widow of John Sharpe. John Sharpe was a fellow of the college, also Rector of Gissing, a small village in Norfolk, and a contributor to the Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Christian Antiquities and the Dictionary of Christian Biography.

Apart from these mild library traces (also a blind-stamp to the endpaper, see below), the work has apparently never been used and is in superb condition.

Below are some views of the varied typography.

Blind-stamp to endpaper

Yes, we are looking for a new home for this set. The international book-trade does not seem to offer this edition at the moment, except for a single odd volume, in a very poor state, priced at £450 / $700. The title is very rare in the trade. Ingrid Oey of Antiquariaat Rashi in Amsterdam wrote to us that she never had this edition in stock. The high quality of our binding is also indicative of the rarity of the title. Because of this rarity, a reprint was published in Jerusalem In 1960. There are no auction records for the original edition, but the single volume currently for sale, with all its faults, offers some guidance. We can find approx 30 copies in US libraries, only one in Germany (StaBi), the Polish National Library only seems to hold a part volume.
Disclaimer: We are not in a position to read Hebrew text or to offer a bibliographical collation for this title. One library catalogue mentions defects like duplicate and missing pages. Our pricing shall try to account for this possibility. Our full listing is here.

The Warsaw Rabbinic Bible
The latest Biblia Rabbinica, with thirty-two commentaries, is that published at Warsaw by Levensohn (1860–68, 12 vols., small fol.). It contains, besides the original Hebrew, the Targums Onḳelos and Yerushalmi on the Pentateuch, the Targum Jonathan on the Prophets, and Targums to the Hagiographa, including the Targum Sheni on Esther. Of commentaries it contains that of Rashi on the whole Bible; Aaron Pesaro's "Toledot Aharon"; Asheri's commentary and Norzi's notes on the Bible; Ibn Ezra on the Pentateuch, the Five Megillot, the Minor Prophets, the Psalms, Job, and Daniel; Moses Ḳimḥi on the Proverbs; Naḥmanides on the Pentateuch; Obadiah Sforno on the Pentateuch, the Song of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes; Elijah Wilna on the Pentateuch, Joshua, Isaiah, and Ezekiel; S. E. Lenczyz and S. Edels on the Pentateuch; J. H. Altschuler on the Prophets and Hagiographa; David Ḳimḥi on the Later Prophets; Levi ben Gershon on Joshua, Kings, Proverbs, and Job; Isaiah di Trani on Judges and Samuel; S. Oceda on Ruth and Lamentations; Eliezer ben Elijah Ashkenazi on Esther; Saadia on Daniel. It also contains the Masorah Magna and Parva, tracts on the vowels and accents, the various readings of Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali, and the introduction of Jacob ben Ḥayyim of Tunis. (Wikipedia)