Are we still allowed to call it Olympia Bookfair?

After a very busy week in New York, both in and out of the marathon 5 day bookfair, I am back on British soil and making plans for my home fixture in the great travelling Circus (No Animals but plenty of Clowns) that is the ILAB International Antiquarian Bookfair Calendar.

New York is a fair unlike any other. The Buzz, the impressive Park Avenue Armory building that houses the fair, the Customers (where else in the world might you see Chelsea Clinton, Yoko Ono, Me and Steve Martin all in the same place at the same time), and the backdrop of one of the most exciting and vibrant cities in the world make it a tough act to follow.

                                                          (Yoko is the one on the left)

                                                                  (Who's Ya Daddy)

                                                      (Steve "just call me Steve" Martin)
      

                                            (Me, playing Hide-and-Seek, on Park Avenue)


This year my Booth partners (The approachable and chirpy James, and the flawlessly elegant Georgina Hallgate from Lucius Books in York.) and I drew the short straw. We got one of the rear wall booths, right next to the cafeteria area of the bookfair. Not a popular choice with either of us as it meant that we couldn't unpack and set up until very late in the first day, we got on with it and didn't complain (too much, or to the right people it seems).
To our surprise it turned out to be a good spot when the bookfair actually opened. Most visitors to a bookfair can't go a whole day without needing a sit down and a restorative drink or something to eat, so pretty much everybody who came to the bookfair walked by, and several into, our booth. I met many new customers, some known to me but who had always walked past me to get to the dealers that they knew, and many that I wasn't aware of before. I got several requests to go on my mailing list for catalogues and some of these new faces even bought books at the fair.

Added to the succesful business was some great evenings in wonderful bars and restaurants, including a sublime Japanese meal in a terribly fashionable eatery (not sure why they let me in) in the East Village where we watched an ultra-skinny Model make a single portion of sushi last over an hour before declaring herself full and leaving her friends to their third or fourth courses. I'd love to know what she made of our table, which resembled Chimps feeding time at the Zoo whenever our waiter minced over with another tray of the most delicious food only to see it all gone in a minute into our hungry, but appreciative, mouths.
If I can ever find it again (trendy places don't advertise, or even look like restaurants from the outside. You have to be in the know, Daahlink) I will work my way through the other half of the menu.

But after New York Bookfair comes, inevitably, London Bookfair, or Olympia Bookfair as it is generally known.
I am not aware of any threats from the International Olympic Committee about the name appearing on posters, adverts and websites, but maybe they haven't noticed it yet. A notoriously aggressive  body when protecting their "Brand", the IOC have used their great wealth and Power recently to take on opponents like the owner of the Olympic Cafe in Stratford who was ordered to change his business name or face legal proceedings. Faced with a large bill for new signage he got his paint brush out and simply painted over the O. Presumably he will wash it off when the IOC turn their attention to the next host city at the end of the games.

This year the Olympia bookfair is moving to the bigger exhibition hall, right next door to its regular home in Hall 2 since 1998. This increase in space has also seen an increase in booth sizes and the number of exhibitors. This means that there will be more books on show this year, even allowing for the handful of dealers who only bring about a dozen books (yet still seem to take hours to set up), than ever before.

The fair is being held a couple of weeks earlier than usual this year. This is to avoid clashing with the school half term holidays and the Royal Jubilee celebrations. The bookfair is a big draw for many but the ABA knows that pitching its flagship event against the first official holiday of the summer and an old Queen (......No. Better not.), is a battle it can't win.

The fair opens on Thursday 24th of May at 3pm and closes at 8.30pm. This is half an hour earlier than usual as some of the more vocal Gentlemen bookdealers resented work getting in the way of their drinking time.
Friday 25th the doors oepn at 11am until 7pm and saturday 11am until 5.30 pm.

With a series of Lectures, demonstrations of Bookbinding, Printing, Calligraphy and Engraving, Guided tours of the fair and the ABA roadshow (where visitors can bring in their own books for valuation) there is plenty to fill the three short days. There is even much hope that the dreaded catering will be vastly improved this year.

I will be on stand number 131 (just in the entrance and turn right, four stands in from the centre) so do stop by and say hello. The multi-talented Maz (Paul Foster Books is the official sponsor of the Mad French Bird) will be on hand to deal with those who choose not to talk to me.

If you want free tickets you can either download them from the official website- www.olympiabookfair.com , or let me know your postal address and how many you would like and I will send them by first class mail.


Paul.

New York Antiquarian Bookfair. 2012.

Coming hot on the heels of February's very successful Pasadena Bookfair in California, the ABAA (Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America) moves its Bookfair roadshow to New York in April for the 52nd Annual New York Antiquarian Bookfair.
Held at the the impressive Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, at 67th street, the fair has a preview evening on Thursday April 12th from 5 to 9pm and is then open friday 13th: Noon to 8pm, Saturday 14th: Noon to 7pm, and Sunday 15th: Noon to 5pm.

This is the Daddy of the international bookfairs. Over 200 of the world's leading dealers, and Me, will be exhibiting a wide range of Books, Manuscripts, Maps, Ephemera, Prints, Posters and just about anything that can be included under the umbrella of collectable printed words and works on paper.

I will be there, at booth A46, right next to the cafe area, no doubt resisting the temptation to blow any profts I might make on what must be the most expensive drinks outside of the Upper East Side Hotel cocktail bars, so I've been told.

I am sharing a booth with James and Georgina Hallgate from Lucius Books, based in York, UK. If you are passing, do stop and say hello. We are approachable (well, maybe me more than James), and will be happy to pass on any gossip that we have picked up during the set up days.


Highlights among my books at the fair will be; A very near fine copy of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles. London. 1902.

A very Rare copy of T. S. Eliot's Poems, hand printed and published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press in 1919. This copy has the first state text and title Label to the front cover and is an Eliot family copy with the ownership name of his Cousin Abigail inside.

A true first edition, 1st state set of Dickens rare three volume novel, Great Expectations. London, 1861. These volumes all have the first issue title pages and text as per Appendix D of the Clarendon Edition of Dickens Works.

Finely Bound First editions of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass. Both are the 1st published London editions, 1866 and 1872, and are lovely copies in fine full red morocco leather bindings, gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere Binders of Bath, U.K.

American Literature is covered as well, including nice copies of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, 1st edition. New York, 1929,

And Salinger's classic The Catcher in the Rye. Boston, 1951.

Among the earlier books is a copy of the rare 1608 "Judas" Bible. So called because of the miss-print "Then said Judas to the twelve, will ye also goe away" in John, Chapter VI, verse 67.

Bringing things up to modern(ish) times are some Punk items from the late 1970's. These include a full set of all 11 issues of the important San Francisco zine, Search and Destroy, 1977-1979, and 3 contracts, signed by Johnny Rotten (as John Lydon), Steve Jones, and Sid Vicious (using his real name, John Beverly), from the Sex Pistols ill-fated last tour, in which they ended up playing just 7 of the dates, in January 1978, all in the southern U.S, and then split up 3 days after the Infamous San Francisco Winterland gig, which ended with a cover version of The Stooges 'No Fun' as an encore and Lydon asking the crowd "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Good Night".

I will also be giving away copies of my lovely new catalogue, so please ask if you would like one.


See you there.


Paul.

Paul Foster Books
49 Clifford Avenue
London
SW14 7BW
U.K

020 8876 7424

Email; paulfosterbooks@btinternet.com

Website; www.paulfosterbooks.com

Member of ABA, ILAB, & PBFA

If Time and Space are relative, how come they never came to any of my Birthday parties?

I have spent the last couple of weeks sharing my office with an odd looking man. Look who's talking, I hear you think (?).
I find myself staring at his face for several minutes at a time, and I can't quite pinpoint why.

The man in question is the Father of Modern Physics, the Nobel Prize winning, Gravity bothering, light-bending, haircut dodger himself, Albert Einstein.

I recently bought a fantastic portrait photograph, a Silver Gelatin print, taken by the Uber-Cool Austrian-American photographer Trude Fleischmann at Princeton, sometime around 1946.

Fleischmann was born in Vienna in 1895 and at a young age discovered an interest in photography. At the age of nine she was given a camera as a Christmas gift and started experimenting with it. As a young woman she studied Photographic arts at college in Vienna, among the earliest Women to do so. Her natural talent and willingness to push boundries soon made her an important part of the Viennese art scene during the 1920's and 1930's, and she photographed many of the cities cultural and intellectual elite.

Forced to leave Austria after the Anschluss in 1938, Fleischmann travelled through Europe and eventually moved to New York and set up a studio there, becoming an American citizen in 1942.
Her talent for interesting portraiture and street photographs meant that her reputation soon grew and she had a very succesful career in her new homeland. She died, in upstate New york, in 1990.




The image is a fairly well known one that I was quite familiar with, after all, it has been published many times over the last 65 years, or so. What I didn't know was that this particular portrait was Einstein's own favourite.

Loosely inserted into a pouch on the back of the frame is a hand written letter, in bright red ink, on the photographers own note paper with her name printed at the top, from Fleischmann;

"April 22, 1968.

Dear Karen,
Thank you so much for your beautiful card. I am so glad you both like the picture so much. It was Einstein's favorit picture as his secretary wrote to me after his death. And that makes me very proud. I took the picture in 1946 (I think) at his place in Princeton. He was so sweet and encouraging, he made me feel at home with him (I was so excited, but he made me talk, he listened to me, I was completely overwhelmed. He was the most wonderful person in the world.

Dear Karen, enjoy the picture.I hope it will bring you good luck.

Enjoy your life and have a wonderful time.

Love
Trude"



Why did Einstein favour this portrait over all others? There are some wonderful photographs of him.
I could bang on about the lighting, his expression, the relevance of the pipe, but I'm not going to.
I have criticised pontificating art "experts" many times myself and hypocrisy is not my thing, so, I will show the image again.

Just Look at it and decide for yourself if you agree with Einstein.





The boffins operating the Large Hadron Collider in their vast underground bunker near Geneva (Had the Bond villian's lease run out?) may think they have proven Einstein wrong about some of his theories, but I personally think he was spot on about this one.



I'm off to stare at it again.

One Moose, One Pecker, but no Beaver, Or The Toronto International Antiquarian Bookfair.2011.

The title of this blog is not just a shameless attempt to get picked up by google and the other major search engines by using often searched keywords.
When I mentioned to a friend recently that I was going back to Canada to exhibit at a bookfair she challenged me to capture pictures of a Moose and a Beaver. When I pointed out to her that there is so much  more to this wonderful country than those two stereotypical animals she started singing Celine Dion songs at me (Some of my friends are more enlightened than others). I eventually agreed to her challenge, just to get the singing to stop. I had no plans to even attempt to get images of either animal but , warming to her theme and finding herself hilarious, she was about to start working her way through the Bachman-Turner Overdrive back catalogue and I had to make her stop somehow.

I flew into Toronto with Air Canada. I assumed that the people working on the national airline would have some of the qualities of the many friendly, funny, kind and warm-hearted Canadian people I had met.
I was wrong.
I would have put it down to just plain bad luck in getting a flight crew who had got out of bed on the wrong side if the mob in charge of the return journey hadn't been even more miserable and rude.
Being made to feel like a naughty school boy for eight and a half hours is not something I enjoy (although there are rumours that one particular bookdealer does and pays a lot of money to make it happen). Even when I was a naughty school boy I got to go home after less than seven hours.

So, there I was. Back in Canada.

                                                                    The CN Tower.



After being interrogated by both Immigration and Customs officers at the airport they finally let me in and I made my way to my hotel, right on the lake front and beneath the wonderful CN tower. I chose to admire it from below. Being petrified of heights I stayed on the ground to save visitors the pathetic sight of me crying and screaming for my Mummy when I got to the top.

Toronto seems to be booming and all around the Harbour front there is major building work going on and mighty sky scrapers compete to creat a new skyline.

                                                              Canadian Building site.

Thursday was spent visiting local dealers and buying several nice books. Well done me.

Friday saw the serious business of set-up and the opening evening of the bookfair at the mighty Metro Convention Centre on Toronto's busy Front Street.

                                                    Metro Toronto Convention Centre.


It was while walking into the lobby of the centre that I noticed the first of several oversize animal statues dotted around the city. There it was. My Moose. The challenge wasn't to photograph a live Moose, just a Moose.

                        

                                                   A well travelled Moose.

After taking a snap of the impressive multi national Moose I turned around to see a five foot high Woodpecker on a post just outside of the lobby. These People appear to like their animal statues.

A Woodpecker made of wood.

This was confirmed by the six feet tall dog and cat positioned outside the pet entertainment centre (I am not making this up. This vast building is full of items and events to keep your pets amused and entertained and even inlcudes a 'Dine with your dog' area) which was next to my Hotel.

                                                                       Big Dog.

So, what of the bookfair?

This event was revived last year after a fifteen year hiatus and all three days were busy with a good mixture of Collectors, Librarians, Dealers and the just plain Curious. Any doubts that, having sated their curiosity, people wouldn't bother returning were quickly proven wrong with a steady flow of visitors on the opening evening. This continued right up until closing time on sunday and many happy customer were seen walking out with bags full of books.
A good mix of well, and not so well, established dealers from Canada, Usa and Europe, with a wide range of material meant that there was something for everyone and sales appear to have been good throughout the whole fair.

                                                                        My stand.

I sold well on all three days and came away happy with my weekend.

                                                                  More of my stand.

On the Saturday and Sunday of the bookfair the Convention centre was hosting a major dance competition in adjacent rooms and the sounds of Hip Hop, Drum and Bass and general pop music drowned out the muzac that was playing in our room. Some felt it was an improvement on the 'elevator music' that was piped into the bookfair, some could be seen putting their fingers in their ears.
One conlusion that I have drawn from this is that, on the whole, booksellers have a lot of rhythm and several could be seen busting some moves that surely would have put them in contention for the prizes on offer next door. I'll mention no names.


As I have written here before, Toronto is a great city with a full range of nightlife. The evenings were well spent with friends, trying out various bars and restaurants and getting caught up in the World Series of Baseball excitement that had the whole city buzzing. Saturday night also saw the Halloween revellers out in force in a range of costumes, most far too small for the cold weather of this time of year.

I look forward to exhibiting at next years event but will get there with a different airline and plan to spend some time searching out an oversize Beaver statue. I cannot believe there isn't at least one in the city somewhere.

Paul.

London Olympia Bookfair. June 2011.

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, Its off to York we go.

It is late August. I sitting here at my desk tanned, relaxed and a few kilos heavier after my annual summer holidays. After a busy year bookselling I need my rest and most years I can be found bobbing about somehwere in the Mediterranean or Adriatic seas during Augusts hot days and devouring the local fish at various restaurants in the evening. I have, on occasion, been known to take a sip of the local wine too.

This year I was lucky enough to have two holidays. One, on the beautiful Spanish island of Menorca, with very good friends of mine that also happen to be bookdealers. Amazingly enough there was little book talk during this holiday. This was partly down to the withering "Oh No. Do you have to?" looks that many bookseller's partners have perfected over the years when they hear the start of a hilarious bookselling related anecdote,  but mainly because we were far too pre-occupied with the importand issues of the day, like; What time was lunch?, What time was dinner?, and trying to keep the little people amused by letting them attempt to drown me in several different ways. Normally quiet and sweet natured children can be brutal when you poke fun at their 'Hello Kitty' armbands. Be warned.

My second holiday was with non-bookselling friends on the Greek island of Corfu. The Greeks discovered fishing with Dynamite in the 1970's and managed to not only kill off all the adult fish but the inafnts and the breeding grounds as well. The result is that Corfu is an island with very little fresh fish on it. It took me 3 or 4 days to get over this fact. I had been looking forward to trying new and different tastes. I got kebabs and feta cheese.
This holiday was markedly different from my earlier trip in many ways, the main one being that 2 of my friends have teenage boys who spent most of the holiday mumbling, pouting and shuffling along at a snails pace behind everyone else. Only the passing of bikini clad girls and huge plates of food made them break into a smile, and then not for long. If I was anything like them when I was their age, I would like to apologise to everyone I ever came into contact with.

The end of the summer means the start of the bookfair season. Traditionally the York Bookfair kicks off the whole thing in early september.
The largest antiquarian and second hand bookfair in the UK, York has some 220 exhibitors spread over three floors of the Knavesmire Suite at York Racecourse, for 2 days. This years the dates are; Friday 8th (1 - 7pm) and Saturday 9th (10am - 5pm).
Because of its fairly central position, York is easily reachable in a few hours from most parts of the U.K by car. The result is that the bookfair has dealers from Scotland, Wales and most of the counties of England. You will find part-time and fairly new dealers alongside some of the biggest and longest established firms that our little world has. This leads to an interesting mix of stock. All subjects, all ages and all price levels. This combination proves very popular with the bookfair customers and it is always very well attended. There really is something for everyone. Last year a regular customer of mine took great delight in showing me a couple of Edwardian postcards of his home town that had cost him just 50 pence each. Also in his bag was an early travel book that he had just parted with a few thousand pounds for. Many dealers make a point of bringing a wide range of stock to cater for this broad customer interest and there will be books, maps, ephemera and often assorted other odds and ends on paper for sale from pennies to tens of thousands of pounds.

After the lull of the Summer and with my batteries re-charged it is nice to look forward to the bookfairs again. After the June fairs in London my appetite for standing about in a brightly lit hall with a hundred other dealers for several days is very low. This follows the previous 9 months of assorted trips around the UK and overseas, from Toronto to Chelsea to Boston to Los Angeles to San Francisco to New York to Olympia. By mid June I don't want to see another shipping case again, or prepare yet another packing list to keep Customs officials quiet.
Now that it is all about to start again I feel myself getting excited at the prospect of the coming months of bookfairs that will kep me busy until June 2012. What I will find to buy? What I will sell?. What interesting new people I will meet, both dealers and collectors? Then there's the new restaurants and bars to try out, and the old favourites to be re-visited.

Should you want to see this glowing optimism in the flesh, I will be at stand number 7 on the ground floor for this years York Bookfair. Please stop by and say hello. If there is anything from my stock that you would like to have a look at, just send me an email ( paulfosterbooks@btinternet.com ) or call me ( 020 8876 7424 ) and I will bring it along. I have a few complimentary tickets available so please do ask if you want one (or two).


See You there.


Paul.

What is heavy, white, and wears yellow check trousers? Rupert the Fridge.

The story of the 1973 Daily Express Rupert the Bear Annual is a strange one, but will, I am sure, be a familar tale to illustrators and designers the world over.

The artist, Alfred Bestall, provided his finished artwork to the publisher as usual. And, as usual, the cover illustration featured Rupert with a brown face and hands (Paws?), while the cartoon strips within all showed a white rupert. This was the way that Bestall designed the cover artwork, and he was the artist so that's the way it was printed.

Bestall had been drawing Rupert since Mary Tourtell's death in 1935 and produced all the artwork for the popular annuals from the first issue in 1936 until 1965. From then on he still produced the colour artwork for the covers each year while the story strips inside were produced by Freddie Chaplain.

Readers often wrote to the Publishers office asking why Rupert changed colour for the cover artwork. Bestall's main reason appears to be that he liked the extra possibilites it gave him for tone and colouring in the cover painting as a whole. This seemed to satisfy the Publishers for a number of years until the print run of 1973 was being prepared.

A few copies, thought to be only a dozen or so, were printed with the artwork that Bestall had provided. These are effectively proof copies of the annual. However, after a boozy pub lunch the Publisher, Editor and Printer took the decision to change Rupert from a brown to a white bear. Why they did it this particular year is unknown. Letters about the colour difference had been written for years and not acted upon. Maybe it was a sign of the times. On British television in the early seventies (I am just old enough to remember) it seemed everyone was blacking up, from Spike Milligan's obsession with playing Indians and Pakistanis, to the Black and white Minstrel show and It Ain't 'alf Hot, Mum. Maybe the Publisher was just joining in with this bizarre trend, albeit changing the colours the other way around. Whatever the reason the Bear on the cover was changed to white for the enormous print run, without Alfred Bestall's approval.

When Bestall found out he was horrified. His brown bear had light and shade and fitted in well with the light sky in the background. The white Rupert blended with the background and suddenly had no tone. He vowed to never supply any artwork for the Publishers again and wanted nothing to do with the white bear annual. In a move designed to appease him, his signature on the back cover was darkened to try and disguise it, but Bestall kept his word and the 1973 annual is the last to feature one of his wonderful illustrations on the cover.

Since 1973 these Brown Faced Rupert Proof annuals have been sought after by collectors, mostly without success.
Occasionally copies do turn up, including the unusual occurance of two copies being offered in the same auction sale by Duke's of Dorchester back in October 2007. These copies were in the collection of Rupert writer Freddie Chaplain and sold for record prices of £26,290 and £27,485 including the buyer's premium.

I currently have a unique copy of the rare Brown faced Rupert Annual for sale.

It is in fine condition and has not appeared on the market before, having been safely housed in the same collection since 1974.
What makes my copy unique is that it has been signed by Alfred Bestall on the title page.

When the Life-long Rupert fan and collector, who I got this volume from, visited Bestall in 1974 he asked the story of the famous 1973 annual. After telling him his side of the story Bestall took down a copy from the bookshelf and signed it, commenting as he did that he had given copies of this rare book to other fans and collectors but had not signed any other copy.

Many artists and illustrators know the frustration of Editors and Publishers making changes to their artwork, sometimes with and sometimes without their knowledge and blessing. This rare annual is part of the story of one of the most famous design changes in childrens book production.