Magic Ephemera

I finally listed the collection of stage magic books and ephemera that’s been collecting magic dust next to my desk for months. I kept waving the bone folder over the pile and chanting “librum catalogum!”, but no dice. I’m a muggle of a bookseller.

Thought I’d share some of the great graphics and hand lettering (click on images for larger versions):

First this 1922 ad for Houdini’s Magical Rope Ties & Escapes from Practical Patter for Practical Magicians by Oswald Rae (1922)

Next the cover to Stage Illusions, compiled and edited by Will Goldston, Magician Ltd., c 1920. Signed by (it looks like) “F. Velhsco”

The cover to Magical Mentalia by G. E. Arrowsmith, Max Andrews, London, 1942. Cover design by Max Andrews (wish I could make the silver highlights pop a bit more in the scan).

And this label affixed in the back of Magic Mentalia from the “L. Davenport & Co.” (London) Magical Supply company which offers free issues of the periodical “The Demon Telegraph”.

Next this emblem/seal from Brooklyn-born magician/writer/publisher, Joseph Ovette (1885-1946) from the reverse of the chapbook Arthur LeRoy’s Futuristic Fantasies , 1931.

Lastly this great embossed devil-themed book ticket from the “Demon Series: Tricks, Jokes, Puzzles, London”

If interested you can see all the items from this collection in my “Games, Hobbies, Crafts, and Collectibles” Catalog (which I must admit is getting a bit broad) or email me for a list.

Book Trade Labels Flickr Group

Blogger The Exile Bibliophile started a Flicker photo pool of book tickets / book trade labels to expand on the Seven Roads Gallery. I’ve signed on as a contributor and will add tickets from my collection shortly.

There are some stunning designs and beautiful examples of hand lettering in these labels and they’re an inspirational reminder of the pride in trade of the bookseller.

Douglas & Foulis: Edinburgh Booksellers

I found three layers of booktickets from “Douglas & Foulis, Booksellers & Librarians, 9 Castle Street, Edinburgh” pasted to the cover of My Lady Castlemaine: A Life of Barbara Villiers (Hutchinson, 1912).

(top to bottom = newest to oldest)

I found this info on the establishment at the National Library of Scotland website:

This catalogue of Douglas & Foulis‘ circulating library gives a fascinating glimpse of the rules of the library, its charges (for one guinea a year, a person could borrow one book a month; for ten guineas, 30 books a month), and what books it contained. Through the supplementary ‘List of Books Added during 1913-1917’, it also gives a rare insight into reading tastes and the circulation of books during the First World War. It is easy to find out what books were published during this period: here we can see that books such as ‘Trench Pictures from France’ and ‘Russian Court Memoirs 1914-16’ were easily accessible to Edinburgh readers with five shillings (the lowest subscription) to spare.

Not sure how long the library lasted but I believe this is the address today.

New Plates and a Ticket

I recently went though every vintage book in the fiction section of [redacted] Books in [redacted] and came up with some nice plates.

First this one belonging to Charles H. Jordan found in Fruits of the Earth by Gide (Secker & Warburg, London 1949):

I like the way the cigar smoke has a calligraphic feel that matches the lettering. Anyone read Japanese?

Next this plate belonging to Ragnar K. Hedberg, found in Panama and Other Poems by Stephen Phillips (John Lane 1915):

Simple but striking.

Next this oblong, oversize plate belonging to Louis J. Elsas and Bertha R. Elsas (nee Rothschild), found in After Such Pleasures by Dorothy Parker (Viking 1933):

(Click for larger image)

This wedding announcement from the New York Times, April 25th, 1909 [pdf] that refers to the couple. Cupid is riding on the knight’s fallen gauntlet, like some kind of challenge.

Next this wind-blown nature plate belonging to B. June West found in Tom Jones (Modern Library c1950):

Lastly a beautifully colored and embossed printing press-themed book ticket from Dutton’s, 681 Fifth Ave, New York (c 1920s).

As always if anyone knows anything more about these items (the owners or the artists) please leave a comment.

Art’s Magazines: Seattle Headshop

I found this label for Seattle’s “Art’s Magazines” pasted to the inside back cover of Lesbian Love by Marlene Longman (generally thought to be the work of Marion Zimmer Bradley) Nightstand, 1960.

Art claims that, “neither of the establishment newspapers would touch this ad with a ten foot pole” so he stuck these in the books. Art’s carried “Detectives, Westerns, Science Fiction… Girlie magazines, Danish Magazines from Copenhagen, Nudist Magazines, Bondage…and books on that ‘ole suppressed sex'”

Sound’s like a very well-stocked head shop. Anybody have pictures from insides Art’s or similar defunct 1960s smut shops?

New Plates and Tickets

Here’s a new batch of plates and tickets from the Donnell sale and some cheap tables.

First this nautical silhouette bookplate that manages to include a heavy-limbed tree, kids, and a sailing ship, all popular bookplate themes. From an undated decorative volume of Virgil (c 1910) owned by “R. Savadge”.

Next this crude but attractive library-themed plate belonging to “Elizabeth Kimball”. Forgot to note where this one came from (crap!).

The last and best plate is this aviation combat-themed plate belonging to “Edward E. Greiner” from a 1927 biography of Napoleon. This one is signed but I can’t make it out. Here’s a blow-up of the sig.

Here’s a ticket from the “Polish Book Import Company, Inc. – 38 Union Square, New York, NY”. Found in a translated children’s book (c1940)

Finally this “Chicago Booksellers Row” belly-band. Probably c 1980. I like this method of promoting a bookselling district.

New Bookplate and Ephemera

Here’s a few newly acquired pieces of ephemera. No theme, I just accumulated a pile.

First this personalized 1939-1940 school library pocket from the Boulevard School (likely in Gloversville, NY but I’m not sure).

I wonder if the aloof-looking girl sketched on the pocket was the crush object of one of the boys on the check-out slip.

Next this beautiful plate that was one of the few prizes collected at the FOL sale I bitched about recently.

I found this using the Bookplate Junkie’s tip of looking through foreign language sections because they generally contain a heavier concentration of plates. I guess since the owners cared enough about their libraries to transport them overseas, it’s more likely that they would attend to niceties like bookplates

The plate’s signed but I don’t recognize the mark. This is the best it will scan. It was in a volume from 1931.

Lastly this fairly plain ticket from Almy’s Book Shop, Salem Massachusetts, found in a 1921 volume.

Can’t find much about the store, except that at some point it may have been replaced by a Burlington Coat Factory (or maybe that was the department store of the same name).

Recent Bookplates and Tickets

I recently went through my book database looking for notations of bookplates entered before I started collecting. I extracted a few nice ones:

First, from the “East Hampton Free Library, Marjorie Woodhouse Memorial Collection, 1935”. a beautifully detailed plate by designer George Wharton Edwards, 1859-1950. (click for larger version).

Edwards was an American Impressionist painter, and the art director for Collier’s Magazine from 1898-1903. While at Collier’s he worked with Maxfield Parrish, Remington, Jessie Willcox Smith and others.

Next this attractive German-language pastoral plate “Mein Buch, Herma Lang” found in a volume from 1924.

Next this personal bookplate from Frances Steloff, founder of the late, lamented Gotham Book Mart:

And lastly two bookseller tickets: “H. Tuchner, Buchhandlung” from a 1924 volume and this beautiful, two-tone medallion from booksellers and publishers “The Sunwise Turn Inc, 51 East 44th Street, NYC”. An interesting sounding book titled Sunwise Turn: A Human Comedy of Bookselling was written about this shop by Madge Jenison in 1923.

Famous Mountaineer Bookplate

I found this bookplate–“Ex-libris Geoffrey Winthrop Young”–in a copy of Tudor Tracts 1532-1588, Archibald Constable and Co, 1903. I was tempted to remove it for my collection but I did a little googling first and it turns out Young was a famous mountaineer, author and poet.

Excerpted from wikipedia:

“Young made many new and difficult ascents in the Alps, including noted routes on the Zermatt Breithorn (the “Younggrat”), the west ridge of the Gspaltenhorn, on the west face of the Weisshorn, and a dangerous and rarely repeated route on the south face of the Täschhorn. His finest rock climb was the Mer de Glace face of the Grépon. In 1911, with H O Jones, he ascended the Brouillard ridge of Mont Blanc and made the first complete traverse of the west ridge of the Grandes Jorasses, and the first decent of the ridge to the Col des Hirondelles….He was elected president of the Climbers’ Club in 1913…and later president of the Alpine Club.”

He published numerous collections of verse, books on mountaineering and the very entertaining sounding The Roof Climbers Guide to Trinity, “a satirical parody of pompous early alpine guides”.

The book also contains a bookseller ticket from “Spottiswoode & Co., Ltd., 17 High Street Elton” and vocabulary notes on the rear endpaper (possibly in Young’s hand).

Quite a cool find.

Bookseller Ticket Collection Grows by Leaps and Bounds

Bookseller Sarah Faragher of Sarah’s Books in Bangor, Maine made me a generous gift of a fat envelope of bookseller tickets (doubles from her collection).

Here are a few of my favorites:

She also offered useful advice on extracting these little buggers.

I find that the easiest way to get tickets out of books is this (if they don’t just pop out because the glue is so old): wet a small square of paper towel with enough water so if you squeezed it out water would be visible, then fold the bit of paper towel up until it’s the same size as the ticket you want to remove, put it over the ticket and let it sit for a few minutes. The water will soak into the ticket and loosen the glue, then the ticket will almost always (unless it’s foil) let go very easily. Set the ticket aside to dry off, leave the book open to dry, too. It doesn’t take long and it really works. Same technique for removing book plates, but I’ve seen people use larger damp pieces of felt for that. After the ticket dries I usually write on the back of it the date of the book it came from, just to get an idea of when that bookseller was in business. Or if someone else sends me tickets I write their name on the backs. All in pencil of course…

This has already saved me hours of heartbreak and disappointment. Check out Sarah’s blog. She posts on running her dream business, books about books, landscape painting and nature. It’s always a nice contrast from the mean streets of NYC bookselling.

Anyone have any photos or know anything about The Satyr Bookshop of Hollywood, CA? All I’m Googling is that the store was designed by architect Julius Ralph Davidson who apparently worked in the Beaux-Arts style, created sets for Cecil B. De Mille and designed famous nightspots: The Cocoanut Grove (Hollywood) (pictured below) and The High Hat Restaurant (LA).

More bookstores should be designed like nightclubs says I, with shady mob ties and Paris Hilton slagging it up in the poetry aisle and stumbling out at 4AM…sorry, I’m drifting.

UPDATE:

A commenter left a useful link from the Rara-Avis Archives containing more info on the Satyr Book Shop.

–From the LA Times magazine section about the 81-year-old Musso & Frank restaurant:

Two remarkable bookstores within a block or so of Musso’s made the Grill an even more attractive hangout for writers. Faulkner, Chandler and Aldous Huxley often browsed at Louis Epstein’s Pickwick Bookshop (opened in 1938). Stanley Rose’s store, literally next door to Musso’s, was a more social place, where writers drank whiskey and swapped stories with the Texas-born bookseller. Musso’s served as the Rose store’s unofficial banker; patrons of both establishments moved back and forth freely in (as Starr wrote) “a nonorganized movable feast.”

An earlier store in which Rose had been a partner, the Satyr Bookshop on Vine, was busted for pornography; it inspired the salacious Bennett’s Bookshop in Raymond Chandler’s 1939 novel, “The Big Sleep.” (Rose’s defense lawyer on the porno charge was Carey McWilliams, whose nonfiction work “Southern California Country: An Island on the Land” in 1946 inspired its own L.A. fictions, notably Robert Towne’s script for “Chinatown” in 1974.)

Thompson, the pulp-noir master (“The Killer Inside Me,” “The Getaway”), lived four short blocks from Musso’s and used the Grill as a virtual office throughout the ’60s, according to biographer Robert Polito. The old writer favored the pot roast special and the zucchini Florentine, washing them down with Jack Daniel’s and Heineken chasers. At Musso’s, Thompson played the hard-bitten raconteur, spinning tough yarns to an eager audience of one or two. And in a booth at Musso’s, he made deals and signed papers with sharp young producers, acts he later regretted.

This sounds like the most hard-boiled bookstore ever. (Thanks Diana!)