Mostly old or "special" books on the redwood desk:
Books n' bones:
Some sporting titles and things...
Parts of some of my few actual collections- THW firsts, Beebe, Seton, Kingdon, Victorians, pigeons-- and some random bug stuff.
Some Pleistocene objects, all from Peculiar as Christmas presents-- Patagonian Glyptodont skin, Ural cave bear hand (the ursine Neanderthal); silver box with mammoth hair and cave bear teeth.
Another "object", so called by Dr Hypercube at Diary of a Mad Natural Historian. What is it? (Not exactly what it seems).
A few books above bear looking at closely. The two volumes behind young Libby the climber above are the uncommon Latin Leipzig edition of Frederick II's falconry opus De Arte Venandi cum Avibus, rare because only a small edition was printed as the allies bombed the city, and mentioned in Bruce Chatwin's story "The Estate of Maximilian Tod".
One more. Go back to the first photo and look at the book that rises behind the little cypress Louisiana decoy, just to the left of Al Hochbaum's wonderful Canvasback on a Prairie Marsh (future post?) It is an "uncommon first edition", to quote an old dealer's scrawl inside the cover, of Greener on Gunnery-- pretty damn cool.
But it is cooler than that, because the book, a gift from my very old friend (in time not age) Jeff Nicoll, was in its own time a gift from Greener to, well, the CZAR.
4 comments:
" I like reading, I am especially fond of reading old books in poor condition by odd people." Diggory Hadoke. Thanks for the pictures, Steve. Tom Condon
And owned by same? Thanks, Tom-- that will be a blog header sooner or later!
Come on! You need to go all in and show us the T.E. Lawrence bookplate!
Thought I had- I will sooner or later.
There is a LOT of stuff there that is "bloggable"! A William Beebe with a letter; inscribed books by more than one antique travel writer or poet; rare letterpress stuff; a bunch of things in Hochbaum; letters from Ronald Stevens (falconers would understand) and Colonel Cooper; and that doesn't count many contemporary letters etc, which I mostly won't print...
Slowly, slowly (;-)
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