Publishers' Bindings Online

The other day I picked out some Library donations to bring home just because I liked some of the simple drawings on the covers.

The cover of this classroom edition of Alphonse Daudet's Selected Stories including La Belle-Nivernaise has a couple of nifty border patterns. I like the steely blue ink on the light charcoal coloring. [click images for bigger]

And the back cover has the publisher, American Book Company's stamp:


A clearer shot from the title page:


A couple other simple designs:


The Show of Violence by Fredric Wertham, M.D.


Escape by Ethel Vance

Of course, these are nothing compared to the collection of binding art at Publishers' Bindings Online, 1815-1930: The Art of Books.
via cosias do arco da velha

Fermilab Golden Books Collection

Fermilab's History and Archives Project features a great collection of short books, pamphlets, and talks they refer to as The Golden Book Collection.

Some excerpts:

Weighty Thoughts by Jane S. Wilson
Well, hello and how are you doing?
Let's have a little chat
About our national obsession
The unwanted possession
Of -- Oh God! -- a lot of extra fat.

From the very beginning
The definition of sinning
lay in Eve's entreating,
"Adam, we're eating,
Come taste it. It's nice".
When they ate, they got fat
And the upshot of that
Was to end Paradise.

from her book of poetry, Songs of Too Much Experience



In April 1979 Chandra participated in the Fermilab symposium, Aesthetics and Science, to honor the contributions of the founding director Robert R. Wilson. This book is a reprinting of his significant remarks on that occasion, some of which also appear in his book, Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar expounds on Beauty and the Quest for Beauty in Science.

Every thinking person at some time has looked up into the dark night sky and wondered about the Universe. How big, how old? What is it, why is it? Where is the edge, the center? What is beyond, before? Every civilization has imagined answers to these questions, and has employed people expert in such matters to answer them.

20th century experts who study such questions about the Universe are scientists known as cosmologists. The word cosmology is derived from the Greek κóσµοζ (COSMOS). κóσµοζ does not mean enormous, immense, Universe, or even "billions and billions." Rather,κóσµοζ is the Greek word for ORDER. Modern cosmologists use physical law as a tool to bring order to an apparently complex and mysterious Universe. The strategy is straightforward: Learn the laws of physics by performing laboratory experiments, and explain the observed Universe on the basis of these laws.

from Exploring the Universe by Edward W. Kolb


via SpaceCollective

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by Marion Bataille

want

o silêncio dos livros

o silêncio dos livros, a blog of images of people with books.
via Gatochy's blog