I would like to bring to your attention the McCune Rare Book and Art Collection (http://www.mccunecollection.org). I am hoping that you might consider adding this as one of your website resources - history of the book.
The McCune Rare Book Collection is located in the JFK Library, 505 Santa Clara St, Vallejo, CA 94590. It does not charge any admission fee. One of the unique features of the McCune is that we encourage people to actually sit down and read our rare books if they are interested.
The McCune is a collection of rare book and art prints. There is a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible (ca. 1450), six other incunabula (books printed before 1501). William Morris' Kelmscott Chaucer (1896) with illustrations by Edward Burne-Jones, the Baskerville Bible (1763), the Doves Bible (1903), and many other rare books. There are famous publisher/printers represented such as Ashendene Press, Baskerville Press, Doves Press, Kelmscott Press, Golden Cockerel Press, Eragny Press, Nonesuch Press, Bruce Rogers, John Henry Nash, and Grabhorn Press.
We also have many early printers from the 15th-18th centuries. We have all the books published by the Book Club of California. We also have a working 1852 Albion Printing Press, as well as many lithographs by Henry Evans.
The McCune has recently begun to put parts of their incunabula collection online. It is under the heading "Early Printing." This section has an illustrated primer to terms used in discussing early books, but it also has a great number of photos of incunabula pages. This includes photos of the Gutenberg Bible leaf and other famous printed early works. The site gives information about the authors of such works, the printers and the subject matter. Some of the authors included are Boethius, Seneca, Virgil, Homer, Thomas Aquinas and Nicolas de Lrya. There is also additional information about other items in the collection.
We would gladly invite any who are in the San Francisco Bay area to come over to the McCune for a free tour of the collection. They can email us at mccunecollection@gmail.com to set up a date and time. We just recently hosted the Book Club of California on a tour of the collection. We extend this invitation to any of your members and readers who get out this way. Our collection is only a short walk from the ferry terminal that connects Vallejo with San Francisco.
Sincerely,
Ken Innes
McCune Collection
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Wow. Even the first page shows pictures of awesome books. Two are mentioned in the Smithsonian's Book of Books and the Euclid I believe in Edward Tufte's Book on Visualisation of data.
ReplyDeleteDigging in is easy and the views become pretty big, I just wish they would not have used compression on the very big resolution of jpg, as it shows pretty strong compression artifacts. A wonderful source for book lovers!