For #CoffeeWithACodex on April 11, Curator Dot Porter was joined by guest host Louis Meiselman, Judaica Special Collections Cataloging Librarian. We looked at CAJS Rar Ms 25, a collection of medieval leaves in Hebrew that have been used in bindings.

Watch the full 30-minute recording on YouTube:

Embroidered book covers

The periodically controversial signs which sometimes adorns the bookshop door

Little Isaac Bawden was quite the calligrapher! 🖌️ This 1763 arithmetic book shows off his flourishing skills. The later 1880s Golden Gems of Penmanship, published during the calligraphy revival of the 19th century, allows us to see how Isaac learned this art! Isaac’s book has been digitized, and you can find it here 📖

(Doc. 743 at the Winterthur Library)

Drum roll please… we have a winner for the super unique copy of @neil-gaiman 🌟STARDUST🌟

The marbling pattern on the boards and endpapers of our late nineteenth-century multi-volume set of John Morley's English Men of Letters is marked by colorful spirals. I wonder if there's a metaphor here: enter the irresistible whirlpools of knowledge and lose yourself in all the information contained within!

Images from: Morley, John, ed. English Men of Letters. New York: Harper & Bros., ca. late nineteenth century. Catalog record: http://bit.ly/40F5jaR

A mixed bag of letters and animals (featuring a couple of dragons!) from a beautiful 1525 book of Canon law. Someone please make these decorated initials into Bananagrams tiles.

Italian Dyer's Notebook

Autograph manuscript, circa 1856-1866

This warped and worn nineteenth-century Italian manuscript appears to be a working manual and color inventory of a wool dyer in mid-nineteenth-century Italy. The handwritten entries are dated between 1856 and 1866, suggesting that the notebook was used and added to over a period of time. The work includes more than 500 numbered and itemized recipes for dyes. Recipes are illustrated with more than 800 wool and fabric samples adhered to the pages. The samples range in colors from shades of brown to vivid fuchsia, turquoise, and mustard. The samples include fabrics of wool, felt, and cotton, as well as raw wool and coils of yarn. Ingredients listed include mud, urine, arsenic, and vitriol. Pages 192-219 contain longer descriptions of dying processes, one attributed to Giacomo Udinese and another to Cesare Bizzi.

Check it out on our digital collections site.

640-year-old fly, anyone?

We're not sure how long this fly has been in this 14th-century notary's notebook, but it was a favorite among the students who spotted it in class a few weeks ago.

La Turade, Bernard de. [Notarial Registry]. 1383-1393. VAULT DC95.A2 N6 1383

Marshmallow, Signed by Author Clare Turlay Newberry 1st Edition Vintage Children's Book in Dust Jacket. by StompingGroundsBooks

Framed

We found a glittering surprise when we opened this volume from 1501/02. The book contains the Latin text of the biblical book of Ezekiel, along with commentary by the 13th century Dominican priest, Hugh of St. Cher.

The decorated letter here (the only one found in this volume) has a frame border which itself echoes the framing of the biblical text by its commentary.

Biblia latina cum postillis Hugonis de s. Charo. [Basel : Johann Amerbach for Anton Koberger, 1498-1502]. (v.5)

I'd like to introduce you to LJS 57, a compendium of Astronomical text in Hebrew, written in Spain around 1391. It's an interesting combination of astronomy and astrology, and illustrates how the division between "science" and "not science" was not nearly so clear in the past as it is today. It has some fantastic illustrations of constellations!

🔗:

HORAE SUCCESSIVAE by Henshaw (1632)

Beautiful book cover of white satin with a floral design edged in gold cord, featured in Cyril Davenport’s English Embroidered Book-bindings (1899).

Time flies when you’re having fun

One of these things is not like the other…

The bindings of the books pictured in plastic bags contain arsenic, while the un-bagged books do not.

Copper arsenic compounds were used as a green pigment in textiles and home furnishings during the 19th century. In 2019, Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation embarked on a study of green cloth-covered book bindings from the 19th century and continues to lead the way on research regarding these compounds in library materials. Their current findings suggest that the publication date range for volumes containing arsenic is 1830 to 1880 and that such books are bound in green cloth or green leather. Most green book covers from this period do not contain arsenic. (While books containing arsenic are green, not all green books contain arsenic.) Our best current estimate based on the testing we have done is that less than .03% of the print titles in our collection contain arsenic. As we identify print titles that contain arsenic, we will take measures to provide other options to make the content available wherever possible.

Read more about how the University of Chicago Library is handling these rare green bindings.

Could you guys all to this for me please I’m looking for the winner of the @neil-gaiman 🌟STARDUST🌟 book. The winner would have received an email from Raffall telling them they’d won and a further email from myself when I was notified of who the winner was.

The winner may just be on holiday and have no WiFi or any number of other reasons but if you know them give them a nudge for me please!

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