Archive: 2010

1. — 24th September 2010

   A book of emblems

   More madness from the shelves at Chetham’s Library, this week in the form of these delightful engravings from Francis Quarle’s Emblems. The idea is to represent Christian truths using verse...

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2. — 10th September 2010

   We shall be pleased to accept the polecat

   We are still adding to our collection of material about Belle Vue Zoo and Pleasure Gardens. Until this remarkable and well-loved establishment closed in the 1970s, it was Manchester’s principal...

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3. — 1st September 2010

   Wife in a bag

   This wonderfully mad illustration is taken from The Economy of Beauty, ‘a series of fables addressed to the ladies’, which is one of the books we are currently minding for...

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4. —

   On the radio

   Chetham’s Library features on the BBC Radio 4 programme What’s the Point of… the Public Library, broadcast yesterday but available on BBC iPlayer until Tuesday 7th September and well worth...

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5. — 25th August 2010

   Twittered!

   Chetham’s Library has been included in the Guardian‘s latest TwiTrip! In this series, Guardian journalist Benji Lanyado journeys around England, guided by tweeted suggestions from Twitter followers, and live-blogging about...

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6. — 23rd August 2010

   A pressing situation

   The wooden hand printing press which has stood for many years at the top of the Library stairs was this week dismantled and removed to Alan May’s workshop in Stone,...

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7. — 20th August 2010

   Fountains galore!

   Among the library’s early printed German books can be found the Nova architectura curiosa or Bau und Wasser-Kunst by Georg Andreas Boeckler, printed in Nuremberg in 1704. This lengthy work...

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8. — 18th August 2010

   Norman wisdom

   The BBC’s excellent Norman Season continues to explore ways in which the Normans influenced our civilisation, beginning of course with the invasion of William of Normandy and his subsequent coronation...

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9. — 13th August 2010

   Some unusual bindings

   These two illustrations are examples of the ingenious ways in which books have often been bound. The first is often known as a dos-à-dos binding (from the French meaning ‘back-to-back’)...

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10. — 9th August 2010

    Make do and mend

    We sometimes tend to equate early printed books with ‘fine printing’, but often books printed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries exhibit all the flaws of a handcraft practised carelessly,...

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