Path Through the Brambles

Okay then – here’s the story of my last talk held last Wednesday night at the Highland Square library, the one that left me wired like an electric eel. I showed up with a huge hunch that something different was about to happen, but no clue as to what. So when the first person in the door could have been at any of the other talks I’d given and fit right in I was taken aback. She was maybe seventy-something, a woman married to a collector who was thinking about maybe selling his  treasures – or not.  Wham!  A strange amalgam of mingled disappointment and relief cascaded over me, but it couldn’t have lasted longer than a nanosecond because right  behind her a whirlwind  blew in and took seats in the front row. Twenty-somethings, THREE of them,  two girls and a guy,  plus another girl on the opposite side of the room seated next to a woman about my age who emitted such good vibes I felt like I knew her.

Goodbye pink note cards with the planned talk – goodbye, goodbye for the third and final time. No way did these people want to hear about collecting books and paper, but if not that, then WHAT? I’d laid out the ephemera and they seemed to groove on it some, so I started with that and it went pretty well for maybe fifteen minutes. I had told them upfront to break in with any questions they had, so the girl sitting next to Good Vibes asked me about the collectability of art books. I talked about that for a few minutes, but I knew I was off track. The expression on her face told me that  somehow I had not understood what she was asking. Could it be that  …..?

“Do you mean handmade books, or altered books?” I asked, breaking off in mid-sentence.. (Oh wow – say yes, say yes!).

“Yes!” she said. Her whole being snapped to life and emanated laser beams  “That’s IT! I was wondering whether you think they might be collectible.”

Never had this thought crossed my mind, but all of a sudden I knew she was on to something important. “YES,” I said without a modicum of  hesitation. “I believe they will, depending upon their quality.”  

It’s TRUE. I think it really is true and I am totally jazzed by it. The whirlwind  too gathered energy and suddenly we were all one whirlwind, talking, talking, talking. No longer was I GIVING a talk. I was in a conversation and they were telling me stuff and I was telling them stuff and it was so exciting I was practically in orbit. I fell in love with altered books the first time I saw one. I even tried making one  twice, but wrecked the first one and criticized the second into a premature death. I burn  to try it again. In fact, for days it had been on my mind and now, there at the library, it flew out into the room like a swallow that had been hiding in the rafters.

The book as physical object. The book as Art. The book as counterculture.  Yes! I want to be part of this! One of the most exciting things they told me about was book erasures, a subject brought up  by the lone guy in the whirlwind. I had toyed with this too not knowing it was a real thing, much less a happening thing, a thing with a name. To make an erasure book the artist obscures all but a few selected words on a page which cumulatively become a poem, a story, or the expression of a thought. Imagine combining it with the techniques of the altered book.

Very soon I will have one to show you because I am determined to make one -- one which I I will neither wreck nor criticize before it’s even born. It was no accident, this talk. I was supposed to be there and learn about this. I KNOW it. I also know that it was a gift, the path I've been seeking through the brambles of technologoical and creative wilderness. If I'm to find the light I need to follow it. And so I will.

(Above are two miniature handmade books written, illustrated, bound and signed by Emily  Poor who gave them to me at the library. The other is a handmade book Eric bought a couple years ago. The second photo shows a book erasure with collage I just made. It's a poem from a college literary magazine of the 20's. I quickly redid it to read as follows:

crimson sun arise.
majesty
transparency
waves of morning light
summer lay soft
We breathed another day
Yet there remained
Some memory of the night
A wistful something -- half surprise

Free at Last!

It feels like centuries since I last wrote, primarily because I have been sequestered in the basement working on an art project for most of that time. I left alibris as I said I was going to, but it wasn’t all that easy. Turns out you have to email them to close your account. They immediately zinged back a note encouraging me to switch to the second payment plan which now allows you to keep your whole inventory and pay as you go. But it’s not about payment plans, it’s about ideology. So, I said thanks, but no thanks, and got out of Dodge. They had me off the air in an hour! So much for thirteen years., huh?

Oh, well, I really don’t care. In fact, the following day I woke up feeling blissful with a sense of having crawled out from captivity which is why I decided to make something to celebrate. The contractor was temporarily off banging on somebody else’s house and I had bought four canvas boards for $5 at an estate sale which clamored for attention. I thought I was close to done the first day I worked on it, but soon realized that I had a serious design flaw and boldly ripped it up, sacrificing  two amazing antique design elements which I shouldn’t have used because they didn’t belong in it, but plowed on with anyway because I wanted to make them work. Is there a lesson there, or what? I finally got it right yesterday though and here it is above. It’s mixed media, with the top portion consisting of layered white  tissue paper painted with watered acrylics. I made the block letters at the top from tiny scraps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Christmas catalog. The entire section below came from magazines and other modern catalogs with the exception of the woman in green on the right – she was an illustration for a short story in a magazine from the 30’s.I still need one more tiny piece circling into the arch on the left instead of away from it, but I can’t find the right thing just yet.  Look closely at the jungly part though and see if a theme emerges.

The other thing I did this week was call the antiques mall about the large booth opposite mine. It’s $120 a month more than the one I have, but it was rented the day before I called. That’s okay though because they said I could have the next available, but I told them I want to wait for one in my own row, so it may be awhile. But that’s okay too because it gives me time to stockpile merchandise. This time it feels totally right to forge ahead – in fact, I feel like maybe  what happened there this month is a portent of good things to come. For the first time ever my mall sales trumped my online sales, making this month  the best one I have ever had there.

This is a short post I know, but I wanted to check in and  tell you what’s going on and show you what I’ve been doing. I have a great story to tell you about last Thursday’s library talk waiting in the wings (a TOTALLY different experience!), so check back soon because I’m excited to write about it. Right now I’m off to walk with Nancy and then head to Akron with Eric to buy a mat for my new creation – the first ever done on a flat surface! – and various assorted art supplies. We have a Hobby Lobby here, but they aren’t open on Sunday and I really don’t like it anyway. So we are off to Pat Cattan’s, fondly known around these parts as Pakistan. Talk to you tomorrow!

Opening A New Window

As I write this I smell like salad from having doused my sunburned neck with vinegar to stop the intense itch. It began last week at the Saline, Michigan Celtic festival inspite of #50 sunscreen which my youngest grandson adorably  calls “sunscream” and got angrier this weekend at the Irish music festival in Berea. Oddly, it’s worse in front than in back and makes me look faintly diseased, but of course things could be much worse. I could be peeling like old paint in a windstorm.

Actually I’m pretty happy today. Yesterday I finished the dreaded Ohio sales tax which is always worse in July  than in January because there are two forms in July – one for online sales and one for the Akron antiquarian show. Progress is also being made on the house, though I am far from getting the house BACK.  But I do appreciate my gorgeous new windows and an island with a Norwegian blue granite countertop so beautiful the Viking gods think it’s an altar.

This weekend I went to two estate sales which left me feeling as though Scotty beamed me up and dropped me off in the good old days. I spent $400, but I also got a lot of old books and paper at both. AND the very best thing I got was the cheapest – two dollars!. It’s a thin  hardback with just 36 pages written by Giovanni Baptista Lemperti in 1905  called The Technics of Bel Canto. The second I saw that baby I buzzed louder than a hive of hornets. There are anatomical drawings and much information from a great singing teacher on the art of Italian opera. Bel Canto means beautiful singing. Another cheapie I love is a little booklet called The Organ in Art, A Brief History, again from the early 1900’s. This one discusses artistically designed  organs made by the Wirsching Organ Company of Salem, Ohio and  designed by George A. Audsley and J. Burr Tiffany of The Art Organ Company of New York City. Both are scarce and the latter has great photographs.

I would estimate that half of what I bought will be listed online and the other half will go to the antiques mall. This month is shaping  up to be my best ever there, but of course part of it is due to the sale of the gorgeous green chairs. Still, it got me wondering about something I’ve toyed with before and never did. I have now decided to shut down alibris entirely and stick with ABE, Biblio, my own site, and my secret site and replace alibris by trading up to a bigger booth at the mall – not a SECOND booth as I’d been thinking about previously, but a bigger one. I have the bookcases now and there’s a booth open down my row again, but I still want to stockpile some more stuff first. At the rate these things turn over that old sense of urgency no longer harangues me, so I can take my time. I have no idea what it will actually cost, but I suspect  the big one will be at least $100 per month more than the one I have, but alibris costs $40 a month, plus 15-20 per cent in commission and is becoming less and less viable for me due to my proliferation of old stuff. Any site which asks you when you list an item by hand if you really mean to price it in three figures is REALLY not geared to the collector market. I think maybe this move could free up some time for me to write again and do my art both of which I feel strongly drawn to right now.

If it sounds like I’m easing out of the book biz banish the thought. What I’m doing is easing into  a whole new exciting change. Never will I ease out. In fact, I’ll have to be CARRIED out. All I’m saying is I need to cut the stress and be creative again. I don’t enjoy alibris and their many affiliates one iota and I’m at a place in my life where I no longer feel a need to play with people and entities I don’t like.

It reminds me of the old Bob Dylan song, “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.” For a long time I’ve felt that there might be a better way for me to be a bookseller. Now I’m finally ready to fling open a new window and see what the breeze blows in.

Talking Books at the Library

Two library talks down and one left to go next week! It’s been a very interesting experience  so far, but I’m not sure what to conclude from it, so I guess I’ll tell you about it and perhaps gain some insight in the process. I had planned the first talk with the emphasis on book collecting with ephemera as the secondary topic, but as soon as the first two people walked into the room my entire plan went up in a puff of smoke. The small crowd – about half a dozen people – did not collect either books OR ephemera, nor did they plan to! So why were they there, you might ask. I asked myself that very question as I took a deep breath and winged it. All I can say is it’s a good thing I’m a prolific talker or I would have been toast.

I had brought a ton of ephemera and a handful of carefully chosen books, so at least there were props to fall back on, but right out of the gate one couple in particular asked surprisingly insightful questions about the future of books and how the internet has affected book prices. Both had dabbled in books and paper over the years, but are older now and have no plans to take it up again. Like ALL of the audience, they’d come to my program for one reason and one reason only – they love library programs! First of all, library programs are free and, secondly, they often focus on oddball stuff, so an evening spent learning about something new trumps TV any night in the week. It’s also important to note that with the exception of one thirty-something and one forty-something (both women) the 60-plus age bracket ruled.

Interestingly enough though,  the gap between young and old was not as huge as you might expect. Though the younger ones probably read more, they were reading new books (the subject of Fifty Shades of Gray even arose)! But  one did perk up when I discussed vintage magazines and the other mentioned that she’d impulsively bought a scrapbook from the 20’s filled with gardening articles. Of course two people’s experiences are not enough to help me reach any meaningful suppositions, but both do speak to the trend I saw at the 2011 antiquarian book and paper show  when young people were the ones  snapping up my ephemera items. I’m not sure I can say that the evening made any significant impact on the audience, but everybody had fun and so did I.

That being said, I happily went off to my second talk last night, this time in a less affluent area, but certainly not an impoverished one. I showed up with the same heavy box of props and great enthusiasm, only this time with  no agenda. Forget that original talk I’d so carefully planned!  If needed, I’d dust it off, otherwise I’d ad lib.  The audience was slightly bigger, but there wasn’t a young person to be found -- EVERYONE was 60-plus. One couple considered themselves more amassers than collectors, but did feel that perhaps they had some books and postcards which might have value, so we talked a bit about the dispersal of a collection. On the flip side though one of the older women in the group still actively collected paper and had no intention of stopping. She figured that she’d taken care of her kids a lot of years so they could take care of “a little paper” of hers someday! Another woman  seriously collected glass, but asked questions about the collectibility of Pearl Buck and old cookbooks. At last -- some traction!

But even those who were not collectors were internet savvy and enjoyed learning about ephemera, some of which brought back memories. We even talked about collecting it forward instead of backwards. Every day ephemera comes into our homes – most of it not worthy of being kept, but some of it surprisingly worthy. Of course due to age none of them would reap any financial benefit from doing it, but they still seemed to like the idea of hanging on to the printed word for future collectors.  The concern for the future of the written word -- both printed AND handwritten -- was universal in this group. Not only did they understand that it was in jeopardy, but also knew exactly what forces threatened it and what the impact might be for future generations. In summation, it was a smart, fun group which rocked and rolled in Mogadore!

I still have one talk left to give, but instead of expecting more of the same, I’m once again finding myself reluctant to predict anything. The upcoming area is urban whereas the other two were not, and has a reputation for being an “arty” place, both factors which could possibly  skew results in some unknown way. I’ll report back after it’s done, but for now I’d say  that despite the small attendance and the fact that I reached very few younger people (and not all the many older ones) I’m still glad I did it.

Notes From the Dust Bowl

Here in the Dust Bowl life is getting interesting. Not only can you write your name with your finger on any surface in my house, but the scent that wafts through the air is Eau de Wood, a lovely smell unless there is immediate sawing going on, in which case face masks are strongly encouraged. I’m not really complaining – just whining a little – because I am so anxious to have it all done. We have the world’s nicest and best contractor, so I shouldn’t even utter one tiny negative thing, but the truth is, I WANT MY HOUSE BACK!!!! I want to be here all by myself screaming at the computer when needed, slouching around in my in pjs all morning if I want, and even lolling in the bathtub just before Eric gets home. There IS one  bright spot though --  the kitchen will be ours again this week. As I write this, World’s Best Contractor  is installing the new island and tomorrow the granite countertop is coming and then he will put up new pendant lights. After that we will still need to do a little painting ourselves, but we can at least scratch one thing off the list. And in six more weeks or so it will ALL be done.

Today I don’t really have time to worry about it though because I am preparing for three library talks and the first one is tonight. Remember back when I was doing publicity for the antiquarian book fair and signed up to give programs about collecting books and ephemera in the digital age hoping to get some gigs before the show? Sadly, I didn’t succeed because everybody wanted them to tie into their summer reading programs in July. So now it suddenly became July which means it’s time to pay the piper. Actually, I'm pretty revved up and ready to roll, but wondering whether people really  participate in such events in the summer. It would seem like you’d get a better crowd in the fall or spring, but it is what it is, so I will sally forth laden with ephemera and high spirits.

I looked myself up on each library website yesterday to see if I was still viable and, if so, what exactly they had called my talk and how they’d explained it. Just as I suspected, each one is a little bit different. Two veer toward book collecting and one is strong on ephemera. I love the title they gave that one --  “What Is Ephemera and Why Should I Care?” Yeah, one could wonder about that, couldn’t one! Hopefully when I pull my fifty carefully hand- picked goodies out of the box they’ll be stampeding to the next flea market to get in on the craze. It’s been fun preparing, though a  bit hard to decide what to bring for show and tell.

When I was writing I used to give talks all the time – at libraries, schools, bookstores, organizations, book groups, conferences and even once at the American Booksellers’ Association (talk about STRESS!). But I haven’t had a gig in probably ten years, so I should probably  be anxious, but I’m strangely not. I love this stuff so much that it fuels my enthusiasm and excitement to do it. At least I hope that will be the case! I want to talk about the difference between amassing and collecting, the reasons to collect, how to collect, and how to store and display your collection. With the ephemera I will also talk about what ephemera IS and why, for example,  something as pedestrian as old luggage labels can shed light on what it was like to vacation during the Golden Age of Travel, as well as how ephemera can deepen your BOOK collection. (See luggag labels below)

I also have lots of stories of course  – I LOVE stories – but  I have be careful not to spin too many at the risk of not offering enough solid information. Once I did a storytelling program at the west Akron Border’s bookstore. A blizzard raged outside, and for awhile it looked like I’d be telling stories to the wall which I actually thought might be okay with me since I had a massive case of stage fright for some reason. But then they  came -- lots of theys came -- including an entire book club. Nancy was there with me and it turned out to be a  blast. A strange energy took hold and everybody got in the groove, telling stories and laughing until perfect strangers became instant frends. By the time the store was supposed to close they had to flick the lights three times to get them to go home!

That’s what I’d like to see happen tonight. But I'll be happy if people  just show up and have a good time.

Selling the Savoy

It never ceases to amaze me how many quirks I have. Just when I think I’m finally beginning to mellow out up pops evidence to the contrary. A few posts ago I told you about the fabulous Savoy Cocktail Book and even provided music  -- Stompin’ At the Savoy by the incomparable Benny Goodman. I totally loved this book, so maybe that explains why I had a conniption when it sold yesterday. The funny part is I forgot the contractor was here because he wasn’t banging on anything at the time, though it could be that I would have done what I did even if he’d been smashing the wall down. Initially, I was excited to see the order pop up on ABE until I realized  that the book had sold to one of the most prestigious dealers in the country. In that moment I completely forgot that I wasn’t in the house alone and screamed “NOOOOOOO!” at the computer. Honestly, you’d have thought an intruder was dragging me out of here by the hair.

Why? I don’t know why. Well, maybe I do, but It’s complicated. First of all, I'm not talking about  the copy I showed you here – it’s the nicer one. Secondly, prices are all over the map for this book ranging from $400-plus to $135 on various sites for the same edition (the first). There was a day when I’d have held out for highest price, but as we all know, today you can sit at the bottom of the list until you’ve prmanently priced yourself right off the planet. After arguing mightily with myself about it I finally decided to go with $200. There was no foxing, but it did show a few small edge chips, fading to the publisher’s name on the spine, and a name at the top of the title page. Still, I had a few misgivings about it , so I also listed it on my secret site where I can usually do better. Surprisingly though,  it generated little initial interest, so I gave up and stuck with the  $200. But here’s the thing – if a private person bought it for $200 I’d have been fine with that price. The problem was that it was a dealer – and not just any dealer – but a DEALER.

Of course, there are two ways you can look at this. You can take umbrage with arbitrage (which I engage in myself on a regular basis so that would be hypocritical), or you can say to yourself, “wow, I just sold this book to a highly knowledgeable and respected dealer.” Sure he’ll sell it for at least twice what he paid me, but it also bears noting that  I got it in one of the recent collections we bought and on a per book basis paid $2 for it, so the mark-up was two hundred percent. WHERE do you get a two hundred per cent mark-up these days? Of course there’s commission to pay but, even so, I did fine. So what’s the problem then? It repeatedly takes me awhile to figure this one out, but it’s truly not about the money. Well, it IS about the money, but not that I felt cheated. See? I told you it was complicated. (NOTE: Saturday Evening Post kindly sent tme an email to let me know that it was not 200 per cent -- but 9900%.!!!!!!!!!!!! My math skills remain truly abysmal!)

The problem is this though. I do not have, nor will I ever have, the ability to sell this book for what I should get out of it. A.) I don’t have a store in a major metropolitan location B.) I don’t have ABAA accreditation C.) I don’t have decades of experience and a wide reputation for high quality inventory and D.) I don’t show my books at major antiquarian shows because I don’t have sufficient reliable inventory to sign up in advance.  In other words, I’m a small-time seller with a burning desire to be more than that.

 As I’ve told you, when I first began I was strictly a commodity seller. It wasn’t until I bought books at the Lillian Knight auction in 2007 that I underwent a profound  epiphany while  sitting on my kitchen floor surrounded by stacks of books from her collection --  Small Italian Villas and Farmhouses (1920); Sketches and Designs by Stanford White (1920); Into the Brazilian Wilderness by Theodore Roosevelt, 1^st ed. 1914; etc. etc.  I had had expensive books before of course, but nothing like these. These had age and a beauty that I had never experienced in my life with  the exception of Kipling’s From Sea To Sea, Letters Of Travel, 1899 (two volumes In original rare slipcase) . I knew as I sat there that afternoon that I never, ever wanted  to sell books with ISBNS again unless they were over-the-top wonderful. Of course it didn’t quite work out that way, though I did shift the bulk of my inventory to non-ISBNs and have consistently kept it there. Most of the time I’m happy with the way things played out, but every once in awhile, like yesterday, a jolt out of the blue will immediately flood me with complicated emotions.

This time, as always, I regained my equilibrium by nightfall, but it’s only good until next time -- and of course there WILL be a next time. There always is -- always.  But the bottom line is this. Though it may not sound like it sometimes, I am very grateful to be able to do this thing at all and do it on my own terms in an age when books and technology struggle in an uneasy alliance. I would of course love to embody all of the attributes mentioned above and would maybe even MORE love it if I could break loose from every single one of the listing sites. But the truth is that none of those things are going to happen.

And yet ....  What about  that old saying “never say never”?  I’ve always kind of liked that because it’s practical without shutting out possibility. So I’m inclined to say that while none of it’s likely  to happen some part of it could happen.

If all the stars lined up just right and the moon was in Aquarius something could.

Maybe anything could.

Star Books

It’s  so hot in Ohio I’m tempted to try frying an egg on the sidewalk. I am not complaining though because today  I am blessedly, ecstatically ALONE with the books. All week I have lived with contractors and constant noise and interruption, none of which was their fault., but it’s still a relief to be back to myself again for a couple days. One thing this work on the house has taught me (again) is that I am really a hermit at heart. I love people, love socializing (sometimes), but can spend hours and hours, days and days, alone without complaint.

So today is truly a blessing, made more so by an interesting sale on ABE. I mentioned last time I wrote that I’d sold a gargantuan book measuring 33” tall (it’s actually just 27” – that was the wrapped size) and was bummed because I felt sure that the high cost of postage would kill the sale. It didn’t though and not only did I sell the book, but I learned a great deal about it from my charming Swiss customer. But first a little back story.

I bought this book maybe four or five  years ago at an estate sale at an old house that had a radio tower on the property. The books were fabulous and I bought heavily over two days, mostly stuff on old radio, astronomy, and printing and printing inks. There were two of these oversized astronomy books and I had Atlas Borealis and another seller had Atlas Elipticalis. Both were painstakingly drawn by Antonin Becvar and published in 1958 and 1962 respectively by the Publishing House of the Czechoslovak Academy of Science. Neither book has any text whasoever --  just  color plates and every plate is a variation of what you see in the photo below.  

Atlas Borealis described itself thus: "Contains all stars with known precise positions, without limitation as to the magnitude, in the declination zones +30 degrees to the north pole. Stellar magnitudes are indicated in the photographic scale which range by half magnitudes, stellar spectra are represented by six colors. Double and multiple stars down to the joint magnitude of the components 10.0 are included. Stars with the distance not exceeding 60" are plotted as binaries, but the components of binaries with the distance greater than 60" are plotted separately. Variable stars down to the photographic magnitude 10.0 at the maximum brightness are included. Stereoscopic binaries and eclipsing variable stars are included in a uniform fashion. The boundaries of the constellations have been reduced to the equinox of the atlas, 1950.0"

Scintillating, yes? Actually, yes! While I admit to a profound ignorance of such advanced astronomy everything in me buzzed at the sight of these books. I could hardly stand it that the other guy had Atlas Elipticalis. But then – miracle of miracles – just as I got in line to check out he came over to me and said, “You want this? I thought it was better than it is. I don’t really think it’s anything, but I thought I’d ask you if you want it.” Oh, I wanted it all right. In fact, I had to curl my toes to keep my feet on the ground.

I sold Atlas Borealis almost immediately in my ebay store (this was back when life was “gooder” on ebay) and shipped it off to Japan. But Atlas Elipticalis hung around in the closet for a couple years until this past Thursday when I rediscovered it and listed it on ABE. It sold immediately and after accepting the exorbitant shipping cost,  the buyer, an amateur astronomer and professional musician, told me a bang-up good story about it. It seems that the musician, John (Milton) Cage, noted for his wildly experimental compositions, created an orchestral piece named after this book – Atlas Elipticalis.  Cage had discovered Becvar’s Sky Books at the observatory at Wesleyan University where  he taught and used this one to compose his score. He did it by overlaying star charts with musical staves and using chance operations to determine pitch and construct “constellations” within the part of each instrument. The beauty of it is that though it contains  86 parts, any part can be played at any time according to the conductor or performer’s discretion.

The music debuted in Montreal in 1962, but the American debut in New York in 1964 with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Leonard Bernstein is the zinger. The musicians refused to follow the score and Bernstein didn’t seem to care. Some say he was even part of the sabotage. Needless to say, the performance was not as expected. But here's the shocker -- when the audience booed Cage as  he walked out on stage the musicians  joined in!

I found a YouTube recording if you’d like to hear it as it should be played. While I don't love it,  I don’t hate it either, and definitely find it fascinating how it came to be. I also think that Bernstein and company could have been a little nicer. But hit the play button and  judge for yourself …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thLGEwlBxjA

P.S. Saturday Evening Post, I think you might like this post!

The Rockets Red Glare

Hope you all had a great Fourth of July! It was different for us this year because the holiday fell in the middle of the week, so no  kids from Michigan or Maryland.  They were here earlier, but had to go home early due to work. So we ended up inviting Darwin, our friend the antiques dealer, for dinner on the third. I used to be quite the cook, but not so much anymore so it was with great trepidation that I took on a scary menu --  corn and blueberry salad with jalepeno, red onion, and a dressing flavored with cumin; broiled salmon; and a pasta dish with asparagus, sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms,  shallots, white wine , basil, garlic and chicken broth. I even made the sauce and broiled the salmon WHILE the two guys sat at the island in the kitchen and talked to me! I don’t even think  I could do that in my prime. Anyway, we topped it off with a mixed berry cobbler and vanilla ice cream. Here’s the weird part though. I bought a bottle of pinot grigio and for the first time ever got a very BAD one. Fortunately, I had the wine our oldest daughter got us for our anniversary, so I pulled a white from that. Bottom line –the cook’s still got it!

We had storms all day though, so it was fabulous to have a lovely evening to sit by the lake and watch the fireworks. But imagine the shock when we found ourselves the only people out there! In the old days we had so many people and parties that every time an especially good rocket exploded our side of the lake would say “oooooh!” and the other side would chime in with an antiphonal “Ahhhhhh!” This year we oohed and aahhed by ourselves.

But enough of that. On with the books! The photos above  are for you Hilda as per your request to see my booth at the mall. As you probably can tell, there is another row of shelves down the left side out of range of the photo. The holiday started off with a bang on Sunday, so I was feeling pretty chipper, but, sadly,  that turned out to be the last hurrah. We sold stuff, but nothing great after that one day. Last year we had a run of several great days over the Fourth, but the holiday was positioned better in the week then for travelers. Eric noticed the same phenomenon at the store. I did, however, sell two books off my Fourth of July display in the middle so I’m feeling rather retailerish. Move over Barnes and Noble – Garrison House Books  is in TOWN.  Well, actually outside of town – but just barely.

Online sales were brisker than one would expect, but nothing great except for an order from ABE for a book titled Atlas Elipticalis which is 33” long and 23” wide and is supposed to go to Switzerland. Yeah, like that will happen. Goodbye one hundred dollars. I’m not even going to think about it because the 3^rd was spent in a tizzy of shipping  worries while I was cooking due to a lost MUST HAVE order. A woman bought a book on B&N and had it shipped priority, but it failed to arrive and was needed by her company as a gift for a foreign dignitary.  Delivery confirmation showed it had left the post office, but after that it seemed to have fallen into the Black Hole of Calcutta. I only had the one so I offered to order her another from amazon with overnight shipping with  the agreement that she would pay the B&N bill on the first one and I would pay for the second one.  I ordered it Saturday night with no problem, but then on Sunday I saw that I had accidentally typed an additional number in the address. Oh such anguish you cannot imagine! So I ordered ANOTHER one, got it right, and got confirmation from Amazon that it would be delivered Monday morning. Only on Monday morning the first thing I saw was an apology from amazon saying they couldn’t do it, but would by the 6^th. At this point the anguish skyrocketed,  ricocheted off Venus, and took a hard right in deep space.

To add to the fun beneath the amazon email  was a note from the buyer telling me how wonderful I was. Of course I wasn’t even so-so,  but as luck would have it, the storms began at that  precise moment, so I had to shut down the computer before I could tell her the truth about my wonderfulness. The whole day stayed terrible replete with tornado warnings and high wind. I cooked, I worried, I cooked, I worried. And meanwhile the house shook with the sound of demolition, as contractors smashed and bashed our master bath down to the studs. We’re  having a lot of work done on the house, so I will be living with this for some time which is fine, but NOT when I am ready to jump out of my skin please.

Finally at three o’clock the sun came out, so I fired up the computer and began composing a mea culpa note to the buyer.  But wait! What’s this? Up popped a note from HER thanking me for the safe arrival of her overnighted book. For this the United Stated Post Office deserves a box of Godiva chocolates. They got it there on time even with the extra six in the address and all! Amazon canceled the second order with not  so much as a whimper, so by the time Darwin showed up all was right with the world.

I just thought of something. No WONDER I was pouring wine into the pan, sprinkling flour, and whisking like Julia while engaging in snappy repartee. After all I’d been through, what was a sauce?

Bookin' A Table At the Savoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rifhroClGI

First we need a little music, so go ahead and hit the play button. Don’t worry – you can read and listen at the same time. Jazz like this is as smooth as a gimlet.

Next we need a book. So – snap! – here’s a book! And not just any book either.

What we have on the screen is the crème de la crème of 20^th century cocktail books written by Harry Craddock, head shaker at the bar of London’s elegant  Savoy Hotel. It’s still in print, but this particular one is Harry ‘s baby, a first edition from 1930. It may not look like it, but the Savoy Cocktail Book shines like the paint job on a 1930 Stuz-Bearcat ---- all metallic glitter and glam in gold, green and black. It’s so Deco it practically invented Deco. And guess what? I have TWO like copies. I knew I had one when we bought the collection by the lake in Cleveland, but the second one popped up out of a box like a rabbit from a hat.

So, now that we’ve got the music and the book we need some background.  To appreciate this book you have to know that it’s author was an American who is said to have mixed the last legal cocktail in New York the night before Prohibition kicked in. But the next morning Harry Craddock packed his bags and left in disgust for London – no backroom speakeasies for him - where he presided over the Savoy Bar from 1925 to 1939. By his own account he created 240 cocktails which may well be true considering that he has 104 containing the green siren song known as absinthe  in the book. But never mind absinthe or its spoons and sugar cubes. Harry’s signature drink was the White Lady.

So maybe we need one of those too. Okay, somebody run out and fetch some fresh lemons, Contreau, and dry gin and we’ll join the endless  stream of famous Savoy guests over the decades – George Gershwin, Noel Coward, Caruso, Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland, Harry Truman, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and the Beatles, all raising  merry glasses of  toddies, flips, nogs, slings, highballs, fizzes, coolers, shrubs, rickeys, daisies, fixes, juleps and frappes many of which are still offered at the Savoy today. The book even offers recipes for non-imbibers in a section labeled Cocktails for a Prohibition Country. This sounds tame and IS  -- except of course for when it’s not.  Mixed in with the non-alcoholic recipes are such sly potables as the Oh Harry! which consists of one-third vermouth and 2/3 hooch whisky with a sugar cube soaked in raspberry syrup or granadine.

But enough about cocktails. There’s ART to be considered here! The book’s illustration and design, which provides most of the razzle-dazzle (though the chapter by the French novelist Collette on wine deserves a nod too) is the work of Gilbert Rumbold. You’d think that after this creation and The Wayside Book there would be more biographical data available on him, but I had to scrounge to find any and what I unearthed is not all that much. He did some advertising work for the automobile industry in addition to the books and at some point lost an arm in a train accident. By the 50’s it seems he was branded a neighborhood “character” who wandered around with his art supplies painting the environs and selling the finished works -- a sad ending for an artist who personified the feel of Art Deco. Take alook  at THIS and you’ll see what I mean about Deco …

Oh, and just so you know, the Savoy has at least one literary connection. It figured prominently in the trial of Oscar Wilde, as Wilde chose the hotel to conduct his infamous love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde was convicted of “gross indecency” for “homosexual offenses” and sent to Reading Gaol, a hard labor prison which later inspired his famous poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol. The edition below is from 1928.

Another sad story, but let’s not end on that note. Hit the button again and listen to Stompin’ at the Savoy. This time watch the video too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rifhroClGI

STILL Mellow in Medina

Well, here it is Sunday and I’m still feeling fairly chipper even though the estate sale I crawled out of bed at 5:30 yesterday morning to attend was not all that great. It had been touted as one of those once in a lifetime, so-fabulous -you -will -keel -over-at–the- wonder-of -it-all sales, which maybe it was, but I sure wasn’t feeling it. A bookseller friend who was behind me in line  precisely summed up the books with my favorite word – pedestrian. How you could own a houseful of beautiful paintings, rugs, art glass, and furniture  only to have a library filled with low-end – um – well, let me use the word the estate sale workers used – “antique” books? As it was, I bought an Akron history for the mall, three minor late 19^th century biographies in excellent condition, also for the mall, and an art catalog I found on a table in the living room for online. I’m not swooning (except maybe over the catalog), but I’m not ranting either, so consider this a marked improvement in my normal post-estate-sale attitude.

This morning we hit the Medina Flea Market which, as always, was more flea than market, but I did have a smattering of small successes about half way through. I  bought one hardcover book – a Datig title on gun cartridges I had before which is fairly good at $45 and one softcover book from 1904 called A Treatise on Modern Drawn Work In Color. This one’s a humdinger – self-published by a woman from Tiffin, Ohio who somehow got advertising to help offset the cost of what turned out to be a very handsome needlework book. The color plates are most attractive and the  book is quite seriously and expensively produced.

From there I picked up a soft cover two volume set of Wyoming history, a paperbound centenary history of a town in Kansas, a souvenir of the inaugural voyage of  the S.S. Aquarama, a 1950’s cruise ship, which has great color photos of high times on the high seas. Think  Ozzie and Harriet  take a cruise. Oh, and just as we were leaving I  spotted a book about Saengerfest, a musical  event held at the Cleveland Public Auditorium in 1927. This was the second to the last such celebration of German music held in Cleveland and it  proved to be quite the extravaganza with a closing concert dedicated to Beethoven on the centenary of his death. Twelve thousand people packed the hall for that one. The book is fairly thick and contains programs from all the shows, plus info on the stars. It’s really more of a paper item than a book, though it looks and feels like a book.

After the market we headed uptown to the square and -- wouldn’t you know it—once again  I failed to bring a camera. They had an antiques show in uptown park and by ten-thirty the place was already rocking and rolling. I was underwhelmed myself because the emphasis appeared to be on primitives. As my friend Cheryl said when we ran into her and her husband, “What’s with all the primitives? We’re OVER it!” Yes, we are – and we have been for decades. I found out later from my friend Darwin, the antiques dealer, that they specifically requested that kind of stuff which left him out. The whole square looked like an edition of Country Living magazine circa 1985. There WAS, however, an upside to this which I think benefited me. The crowd remained steady all day long  (we were uptown three times – once for the show, once to drop my culls to Project Learn’s bookshop, and once for ice cream at Lemonberry which I have been erroneously calling Limeberry. We walked the third time, so we saw lots of coming and going.

Anyway, sales shot up remarkably at the antiques mall yesterday and we think it very definitely had something to do with the show. The crowd was too big to be just locals, so I’m wondering if people got tired of looking at the same old stuff and decided that since they’d come so far they might as well  drop in at the mall which is only about  two miles away. I ended up selling a three volume set for $225, plus some other books in the $25-$40 range. It has been sloooooow over there since April, a phenomenon that doesn’t appear to have affected only me, which of course I thought  was the case. At Saturday’s sale THE topic of conversation among dealers of whatever who sell at malls (which is practically everybody and there are more malls than just mine) was the pronounced and unprecedented drop in revenue beginning in April.

Last year the Fourth of July weekend rocked at the mall, so now I’m hoping it will again. I remembered last night that I have these brand new red and blue oversized napkins sprinkled  with white stars which I’m going to lay over a tablecloth to decorate the ephemera table. I am going to temporarily take away most of  what’s on it and replace it with Americana and red, white and blue books of special interest standing upright in the new Lucite holders Eric bought from Brodart. I had been feeling blah about the whole thing, but after all those sales I’m jazzed again.

On that note it’s time for me to hit the online books though,  as I’ve essentially been off duty since Friday. As always, slow down production and reap the sad results!

Mellow in Medina

Here it is Thursday already and almost time for the weekend acquisition parade. There are very few books available at the estates this week, so my anticipation is sub-zero. As it turns out, we didn’t go to Cincinnati after all . Eric had been keen on it originally and I less so, then he talked me into it, then I talked myself out of it, and then last Friday’s terrible estate sale first made me feel desperate to go and later deepened my suspicions that it was a bad idea. Finally, on Monday, Eric changed his mind too. We decided that if a formerly stupendous sale like Case Western Reserve University’s experienced a sharp decline in donations this year, a township library system probably isn’t staggering under the weight of collectibles either. It would have cost upwards of $300 to go, which we could easily call entertainment ,at least in part, but in the end it really wasn’t worth it.

So I keep listing and the books keep disappearing. What’s very interesting to me is that my secret site, which does not normally outperform the book sites, is steamrolling ahead of alibris ten to one which makes me begin to think that it might be time to ditch alibris and put more muscle behind the victor. I think what’s happened here is that the more I move toward antiquarian and collectible books and ephemera the smaller my share of the alibris customer base becomes. I’m okay with it really because it’s just one less place to worry about. So far this month I have sold them ONE book so it’s not like I’m in danger of losing a small fortune. I’ve been with ABE since 1997 and with alibris  since 1999, but to tell you the truth I could walk away happily from the latter which of course I  may l be doing if things don’t pick up. ABE meanwhile has been good and Biblio better than normal (though never brisk) with several three figure sales.

The one thing I’ve learned in these fifteen years in the book biz is that change is inevitable and to stay alive you have to keep reinventing yourself. I remember thinking when I first started that the whole thing was pretty darn easy and I’d do it forever just exactly as I was doing it then. It’s laughable I know, but I did think it. Since then of course I’ve experienced  so many tweaks and turns that the only  thing I know for sure  is that I’ll be tweaking and turning until the final chapter ends. And so will everybody else.

On the bright side I’m feeling kind of mellow today. It’s high summer here – a little hotter than I’d like, but pretty glorious. It has me thinking Shakespeare (“Can I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate ...") and showers of golden sonnets set against  the lush backdrop of a rip-roaring BBC production with rolling green hills, blue skies, and endless fields of wildflowers

Last night we embarked on Part One of our 42^nd wedding anniversary celebration by packing a picnic – pasta salad on a bed of fresh baby spinach, a bakery baguette, fresh fruit salad, and a bottle of a Spanish wine that we’d gotten as a gift (I don’t recommend the latter – too fruity, too bitter, too something)  and heading to Blossom Music Center in Akron which is also home to the Porthouse Theatre. We chose the theatre and had tickets for Damn Yankees which is a sillier than usual play of the musical theatre genre, but still great fun. What’s not to love about a wickedly funny devil, a gaggle of cute little kids from the area, dancing baseball players, and that old song You Gotta Have Heart?

Part Two of our celebration will be Friday. Eric is taking the whole day off so we can shop for the things needed for our upcoming house renovation project followed by a dress-up dinner in the evening. I’m not sure where we’re headed, but there’s one requirement - - it absolutely, positively must have salmon on the menu.

So. There’s what’s happening here. I was a little disappointed that more of you didn’t chime in about the state of acquisition on my last post, but I really didn’t think you would. Maybe it’s all been said before. Maybe you aren’t experiencing it. I don’t know.  Here in northeastern Ohio it’s a huge problem, but for now just call me Scarlett.

I’ll think about it tomorrow.

No, I won’t either.

Maybe Saturday.

Booking A Conversation

As usual, there’s been too much running around and not enough time for anything else. I had planned to post Friday after the estate sale we went to, but came home so demoralized I couldn’t bear to bore you with the awfulness of it. In a nutshell, this particular company has been raising their prices on books exponentially right at the moment when the future of  the printed book hangs in the balance. It’s interesting to me how all these years when books were a hot commodity I could pick them up at this company’s estates for $2-4 a volume and now when prices are tumbling for most titles they think they’ve joined the revolution!

To give you an idea of how truly bad this has gotten they had a mind boggling array of early hard cover Grace Livingston Hill and Emily Loring titles priced at $10 each. You can buy these for peanuts online ( though why would you want to?) and even less at sales where they pop up as frequently as dandelions. They also had a copy of an Akron title  --  A Centennial History of Akron 1825-1925 – which I’ve sold three times over the years at $45, $40 and (most recently) $35. Theirs? A ridiculously optimistic $45! I think perhaps what bothers me most is that every time they run an ad they brag about their “always reasonable” prices. I used to really like this sale, but I think I’m about done with it. I know I’ve said that before, but truly this is getting outlandish.

We had also planned to go to a second sale Friday night, a fancy one  with wine and food, but I couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm after wasting three hours in the morning. So guess what happens Satuday afternoon? I hear from my antiques dealer friend Darwin who tells me he bought five books on Oriental rugs for his own reference library only to find that one about Caucasian rugs, for which he paid $6,  lists online in the $200-300 range. I’m happy for him, but it’s possible that he just got lucky. Still, it I did make me wonder what else I missed. By the time we showed up on Sunday there was very little left. I bought three workaday titles for $2 each and will probably sell them in in the $20-25 range, so no big excitement.

I did, however, snag a gorgeous table for the antiques mall (see above). I got a tremendous deal on it and knew I could easily triple my money  at the mall, but now I don’t want to sell it. We took it home, put it in our formal living room “just to see” and immediately roots sprung out of its legs and through  the wood floor into the basement ceiling where they knotted themselves into an impenetrable snarl. So I guess that pretty much killed that idea. I did get an ugly chair, much like the other ugly chairs I sold in my booth (no, Saturday Evening Post, NOT the green ones), which is good because it gives people somewhere to sit to check out the lower shelves. Because of their extreme beauty, the GREEN chairs had been cordoned off – no sitting allowed.

So there was my weekend,  a rather strange one which made me think again of Linda, my bookseller friend who temporarily dropped out to have a knee replacement and never came back. Linda loved the estates and bought a good deal of her inventory there. Today you’re lucky to find an estate sale that advertises books at all  and when you do you have  to brace yourself before you can even think about entering  the fray. If estate sales were my primary source I’d sell maybe two books a month at this rate.

It probably seems to you that I'm awash in books anyway given the collections we bought recently, but I have been listing pretty steadily, so lately a sense of panic overcomes me when I see the pile in the office diminishing even AFTER the books I got with Cheryl last week. Remember, too,  that the one collection we got was comprised totally of Ohio titles which will sell in their own (sloooow) sweet time. Everything in me screams that the sale I told you about in Cincinnati will not be the golden event of two years ago, but I’m desperate enough to pay it no mind. I’m over the part about finding the rare magazines there, so it's not that. I know that was a fluke never to be repeated, but I’m worried enough about summer’s slower acquisition rate to book a hotel anyway.

I know I've been yakking about all of this for at least a year and hope I'm not boring you to death with it.  The only reason I bring it up today is that I'm wondering if maybe we could start a conversation here. I really want to know what you guys think! If you're a bookseller, or even a seller of vintage whatevers, please join in and let's talk. Antiques dealers and booksellers complain about the very same things these days -- acqusition is harder, prices are higher when you buy and lower when you sell, and the trend is away from both books and antiques. So, that being said, whadda ya think? Wanna talk?

It's On the Bag!

I wish I could tell you that the reason I haven’t been here is because of all the work I’ve accomplished, but that wouldn’t be true. There’s a been a fair amount of lollygagging going on, especially yesterday when I indulged in a four hour lunch with my neighbor Linda. It was her birthday so we went to Sully’s Irish Pub for lunch and then to Limeberry for frozen yogurt which we ate while sitting on a bench on the sidewalk like we had nothing to do but watch the people with agendas stream by. I wish I’d taken my camera as Medina sparkled in the sun like a glossy Chamber of Commerce ad.

One funny thing did happen though. For some time now my friend Darwin has been encouraging me to view estate sales as a venue for buying  things other than books – nice things, practical things that can save you a ton of money. So this winter I finally got into the swing of it and bought two vintage purses (I have quite a penchant for these, but used to pay top dollar from vintage clothing people), a tape dispenser, and a giant basket of acrylic paints, for which I paid $2, $1.50 and $5 respectively. As it happened, it was January  when I bought the gorgeous straw purse shown above, so I stashed it in the closet and pretty much forgot about it But just as we were leaving for lunch I remembered it, raced upstairs to get it, and quickly dumped the contents of my old purse into it before I flew out the door.

I had to go to the post office to ship books (Eric has been in Indiana for a week), so I decided to get that odious job out of the way first. Going to this particular post office is an ordeal for which one would be well advised to chug down a bottle of pino grigio in advance . I had no choice though  because the one sole foreign order zapped the possibility of going to the branch at the grocery store where life is good and people are nice. But – surprise, surprise! – behind the counter stood  a new young man, a young man who smiles at you and will even read the numbers on the address for a Woman of a Certain Age who’d forgotten her glasses and was squinting to fill out the customs form. I can’t tell you what a rush this was. I was so happy with the whole thing  I even snuck an admiring look at the new purse when I put my checkbook back. That’s when I saw it – the small $2 price tag facing out on display for the long line of customers to view! At least it was a major good deal. These straw purses, especially with a label, do not come cheap – unless of course you buy one for $2 in the back bedroom of a house in Wooster. My fashionista friend Jessica (the only friend  I have who carries a dog in her bag) stopped by this morning and declared it a major score.

Despite all the fun and games I did manage to get a lot of books listed this week and even sold some. Sales seem excruciatingly  slow to me, but when I look at the numbers I’m doing better this month than last, thanks in part to three vintage children’s books Eric got when I was sick from the woman who used to be an antiquarian seller and belonged to NOBS. I even tossed a little virtual confetti over the one pictured below, as it’s fairly scarce and commanded a good price on my secret site (it also sold in two hours!). Actually I sold FOUR books over there this week, but I think that streak’s deader than Gingrich’s run for the presidency.  Even my Alice Under Ground which, as you may recall, had been lost for months in my mall  booth where someone had deliberately hidden it, failed to dazzle them. If they aren’t charmed by THAT (see photo below) than I doubt I’m going to be winning any popularity contests soon. The only real bright spot is the chairs. Remember the pair of fabulous green leather designer chairs (oh, Saturday Evening Post, ye of little faith) I took to the mall? Well, I sold them for $425!

Eric’s been gone all week though, so that’s been a bummer. He’s coming back tomorrow (not soon enough!) and perhaps then we’ll do that thing we used to like – estate sale shopping (I need serious furniture for the mall again). The estates sales have just been dreadful here of late. I can’t recall going to anything since before the antiquarian show. We’re also thinking we might take a little road trip to Cincinnati next week. Two years ago we hit a nice sale there where within two seconds I’d found a pair of rare Knight Errant magazines that sold  here on my blog a year after I wrote about them. We’d planned to go last year, but my friend  Jessica (she of the dog in the purse) gave us tickets for Jersey Boys for my birthday and – wouldn’t you know – it  coincided with the sale. It’s a long haul to Cincy though and requires a hotel which makes it expensive, but Eric is pushing to do it, so I guess we will.

I’m not expecting much though. Lightning, or so they say, never strikes twice. When it comes to computers that's actually a GOOD thing! But with book sales --  not so much.