Browse Items (420 total)

The paper that makes up the cover for this little French comedy of the 17th century has been created with a technique new for this era: hand block printed paper, termed “dominoté” in French. The motif used here has been printed and then the colours…

In the 20th century, in addition to the pasted-in ex-libris bookplate, we find many different styles and formats of ex-libris indications. The stamped ex-libris turns out to be not only a less onerous form but also one that is much more practical. We…

This image shows a very fine mottling scheme, where the white/cream colours are omnipresent on a background of red and blue. In this example, the dark colours had been deposited on the surface of the liquid mixture before the white. It is this last…

This book offers us an example of a new owner actually wishing to keep the traces of previous ownership. Besides the wish to keep track of the origin and physical journey of the book, it was also a way to assert ownership of the copy to anyone who…

Round button with blue background and white lettering, and one button with black background and yellow lettering.

Printed in Merseburg (Germany) in 1753 by Christian Ludwig Forberger, this work displays an outstanding and perhaps mindboggling combination of font sizes and styles, as well as a mixture of red and black lettering, on one title page. (With no proof…

Bringing to life the adage of “waste not, want not”, this book’s binding is made of parchment that originally was someone’s correspondence. With paper and leather being expensive commodities due to the ever-increasing amount of titles being published…

The endpapers of this accounting “textbook” by François Barrême, a very popular work in its time, was used by its owner to puzzle out practical exercises of calculation, including problems and answers.

This book offers a typical example of the classic formula of “promise” and “reward” that one regularly finds in books of the 15th and 16th centuries. The phrasing varies as per the personality and humour of the owner and how much value he assigns to…

This religious work was published in Québec City by Samuel Neilson (1800-1837) and William Cohen. Samuel Neilson inherited his printing studio from his father, printer John Neilson (1776-1848), who was the printer for the Gazette de Québec, and the…