Archive: 2010

1. 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...

   24th September 2010 • Read more

2. 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...

   10th September 2010 • Read more

3. 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...

   1st September 2010 • Read more

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...

   1st September 2010 • Read more

5. 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...

   25th August 2010 • Read more

6. 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,...

   23rd August 2010 • Read more

7. 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...

   20th August 2010 • Read more

8. 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...

   18th August 2010 • Read more

9. 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’)...

   13th August 2010 • Read more

10. 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,...

    9th August 2010 • Read more