Los Angeles Book Fair

Not long back from the ILAB International Book Fair in sunny Los Angeles. I received online severe weather warnings most days I was there, but these actually seemed to mean it was going to be just a little bit misty or breezy. Enough books were bought and sold to justify the cost of the trip - just about. Something of an achievement given the exchange rate, and it's always good to see what books other dealers have and to catch up with friends, particularly our dear friend Judy Cohen, who specializes in books on the decorative and applied arts as does Dorothea Rota at Bertram Rota Ltd. Here's her website:

www.jmcohenrarebooks.com

Our website

Here, rather belatedly, is a link to our website

www.bertramrota.co.uk

The Harold Pinter Archive

We were delighted to have brought about the sale of Harold Pinter's papers to the British Library towards the end of last year. We have handled many author's archives over the years - this was truly outstanding and a joy to catalogue. It was also a great privilege for me to have spent time with Mr Pinter and to have enjoyed his witty, kind and stimulating company and hospitality.

RON TAYLOR AT BERTRAM ROTA, 1964-1990, being some anecdotes by an old colleague

Ron Taylor and I were near contemporaries in terms of joining the staff of Bertram Rota Ltd. in 1964. My first day was 7th September and Ron’s was the 28th. However, while Ron was a highly experienced and knowledgeable bookseller who had come to run Rota’s expanding antiquarian department, I was merely a novice who was learning the ropes in their very well-established Modern First Editions business in Bodley House in Vigo Street.

For a while after his arrival Ron was something of a mystery figure to the Bodley House staff. His department, comprising himself and a secretary, was housed in separate premises in Vigo Street, on three floors of a tall, thin building above the newsagents shop run by the redoubtable but kindly Miss Napoleon. This slight geographical separation served Ron well in those early days, allowing him to concentrate on sorting out what he described as the 'shambles' left by his predecessor. Once everything was sorted, organized and catalogued to his satisfaction we began to see him more frequently at Bodley House and since my duties included escorting visitors to and fro and a good deal of general fetching and carrying along the narrow pavement between the two buildings I was often in his room at the very top of the building and able to learn more about the stock he kept there.

I soon discovered that curiosity allied to a half-way intelligent question could unlock Ron’s huge fund of bookselling knowledge, lore and anecdote. He would move about his tiny office pulling books off the shelves to explain 'points', show me a Nelson letter, or an early tract on agriculture, and all with equal enthusiasm. Sooner or later a relevant anecdote would occur to him and generally he was about halfway through when the house phone would ring and someone from Bodley House would be demanding to know whether Ron had kidnapped me. Of course, I never addressed him as 'Ron'. In those much more formal days he was always 'Mr Taylor' or 'Sir' to me and I was always 'Mr Scott' to him.

I got to know Ron really well when I had my first experience of the effects of true bibliomania. I was assigned to help him in clearing the library of a recently deceased actor who had lived in a large house in Mill Hill. Each morning I would take the tube to Mill Hill East and Ron would meet me in his car and drive us to the house. On the first morning he said little about what I could expect when we reached the house, other than the fact that the actor had left a proportion of his collection to an institutional library. When we arrived a large truck was leaving, loaded down to the wheel arches with the bequest. I said something to the effect that there couldn’t be much left. Ron’s response was a grin and 'Wait and see.’ I didn’t have to wait long. The hallway seemed quite normal, but behind that the house was stuffed with books, including the coal hole, and a large summerhouse and shed in the garden were similarly packed to the eaves. I couldn’t see where a single book might have been removed to load down that truck. We spent several winter days literally wading through books, sorting and evaluating as we went and eventually cleared the house. Each lunchtime we would repair to the local pub and over a pie and a pint (cider in Ron’s case) we would discuss our findings, calculate valuations on the back of an envelope and speculate on what we might find next. I learnt a lot about bookselling and about Ron’s life and times in those winter days in Mill Hill.

It was during the Mill Hill pub lunches that Ron started calling me by my first name, but even then it didn’t seem 'correct' for me to call him anything other than 'Mr Taylor'. The pub was also the venue for yet more of his anecdotes, this time without interruptions. One concerned the widow left in straitened circumstances by her academic husband. Ron was called in to buy the library, but found little of worth except a large collection of Bernard Shaw with whom the academic had enjoyed an acquaintanceship over many years. Most of the books were inscribed by Shaw and Ron made a generous offer for them. The widow duly accepted and Ron made an appointment to return, hand over a cheque and collect the books. When he returned he found the widow seated before a roaring fire. To one side of her chair were stacks of the Shaw volumes and in the fire fluttered shreds of charred and burnt paper. Ron watched horrified as the widow tore the inscriptions from the last couple of volumes and threw the leaves on the fire, explaining as she did so that it would not be proper to allow Shaw’s inscriptions to be read by anyone other than her husband. Ron took no pleasure in explaining exactly why the books were no longer of any value to him, but restrained himself from throwing the now useless cheque into the flames as well.

During Ron’s time with Bertram Rota he was instrumental in negotiating many important sales, but one of which he was particularly proud was that of a library from Portugal. It had been founded in the nineteenth century to provide reading matter for an expatriate British community involved in the production and export of port and the time had come when the descendants of the founders decided to dispose of the, by then, largely unread early fiction. Ron went to Portugal and discovered a horde of books that had lain untouched for decades, many in outstanding condition. Ron undertook negotiations in Portugal and London and personally oversaw the packing of the books in many crates. Had he been able to do so I am sure that he would have flown back in the cargo bay sitting on top of them. I remember the joy, tempered with concern for their condition after the flight, with which he unpacked them. Moreover, it was not the fine first of Frankenstein, or the run of Jane Austen that gave him the greatest pleasure, but rather all the shelves of anonymous, pseudonymous and wholly forgotten three-decker novels that delighted him most.

The decision had been taken early on that the library must be kept intact and Ron duly found a client ready, willing and able to do this. I’m sure that his pride and pleasure in a successful sale was tinged with more than a little sadness as he watched all those lovely three-deckers being carefully packed back into their crates.

I went on a number of calls with Ron when both Modern Firsts and antiquarian books were involved. He was of no great height and from my point of view as a passenger his driving posture always appeared to be somewhat lower than that of the top arc of the steering wheel. Nevertheless, I always felt completely safe, except once. We were on a mercy dash to the home counties where a client’s house had been damaged by fire. By some miracle his precious library had been unaffected by flame, smoke, or water from the fire brigade’s hoses, but he needed to have the books removed and stored safely. Ron hired a large van and was unhappy with it from the outset, finding the steering sloppy and unpredictable. However, the journey down was accomplished safely and the books packed and loaded. The journey back to town was undertaken in almost complete silence as Ron wrestled with the steering and concentrated on making sure that we and the books all reached base safely. I recall that he spoke only once, when the van veered and its passenger side mirror met the mirror of a parked van, snapped off at the root and pinged past my window. 'Hmm,’ muttered Ron; 'I thought that had looked a bit loose.’

Like all experienced antiquarian booksellers Ron had developed a sixth sense for a 'good book', even if it was far outside his usual areas of expertise. Moreover, on my trips with him I discovered that he had well-developed ability as a 'shellac detector', used for tracking down 78 records, first for his own collection and later for stock in preparation for the day when he retired from bookselling and took up dealing in rare records. This was an interest that had grown out of his love for music and especially for that of Sir Edward Elgar. He even went to the trouble of tracking down some records for my Great War collection. Indeed, long after Ron left Bertram Rota he remembered my interest in the period and once in a while an envelope would arrive from him containing cuttings and ephemera on various aspects of 1914-1918, accompanied by a note in his distinctive hand expressing the hope that they 'Might be of interest?' They always were.

Hong Kong Book Fair Report

In this, the first Chinese international bookfair, (though not the first in Hong Kong, which I understand was some 5 years ago) there was a real pioneering spirit of expectation and adventure. The fair was massively oversubscribed, with 64 booksellers, 15 of which were from the UK. This meant that the venue was not ideal, with the booksellers spread over three rooms. However, this did not deter visitors, of which there were approximately 1500. These were mostly Asian, both private and institutional: there was a noticeable lack of ex-pats, which many were expecting, but with ever present budgetary constraints, it was deemed wise to make the push for the Asian market. It was certainly well covered in the press, radio and television both before and during the fair. Sales were, overall, extremely good with, I gather, as much as US 2 million sold. Sadly not all with us: but there was enough money sloshing around for even the most unsuccessful to feel positively about the fair and its potential. This achievement is due in no small part to the magnificent dedication and hard work of the core team of Paul Feain, Mr. Mitsuo Nitta, Chris Li, Ellie Aroney, and Fang Ling Jong.

It has to be said, the Chinese do things differently. Of course, as booksellers, we’re not above a haggle, but 50% discount straight off the bat was startling. Also, my near neighbours Robert Frew and Barbara Grigor-Taylor did the majority of their business in, literally, the last 20 minutes of the fair. There was a real down-and-dirty market mentality that was thrilling to watch. The naivetes of the questions were also curiously refreshing and showed real interest. One customer asked if he could perhaps buy a copy that hadn’t been read; another faced with the two copies of an identical title, one signed and one unsigned, priced accordingly, asked “why didn’t he sign that one”?

There was great interest in the concept of book buying and collecting that cut through the usual bookfair ennui, though there was, unsurprisingly, an insularity that meant that the dealers with Chinese, Chinese/Western material attracted the most sales. It would be good to combine the next fair perhaps with some sort of symposium/lecture/workshop on book collecting: it would appeal, could inspire, and certainly build on fledgling interest.
The Western booksellers had made a real effort, with many providing parallel descriptions in Mandarin. John Randall’s impressive catalogue in rich imperial yellow was particularly enticing, with books priced from £15.00 to £75,000. One bookseller, rather waspishly, declared that this was a “Chino-Japanese fair to which we’ve been invited to defray costs”, but this wasn’t a general view. Most people seem happy to be there and optimistic about future sales. Where there collectors there? Certainly. Could it create a new generation of collectors? Judging by the amount of teenagers that I saw floating around on all three days (some faces repeatedly), with bags, with books in them (as opposed to catalogues) it could be a real possibility. Which after all, is what it’s all about.

Dorothea Rota

Books in the Blood

In 2002 my father Anthony Rota published his memoirs, Books in the Blood, published by the Private Libraries Association in the UK and Oak Knoll Press in America. The book sold well and received excellent reviews. This is a copy specially bound for a Designer Bookbinder Competition (see below) by Marianne Harwood, which we could not resist buying from her. We are proud to have it at the centre of our mantelpiece in the middle of a bound set of our catalogues (from number one issued in 1923) to the present day.

The letters “o” in the words “Books and “Blood” on the spine are set at an angle and as can be seen appear on the covers as a flow of blood cells. We thought it was inspired and perhaps all the better for not being immediately obvious. The binding shows all of Marianne’s usual precision and skill - the image below does not really do it justice.

Designer Bookbinders Annual Bookbinding Competition

Having been asked for the second year running to be a judge for the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Associations prizes given at the Designer Bookbinders Annual Bookbinding Competition, it was a special pleasure to attend the private view on November 17th at John Rylands University Library. I had not revisited Manchester since I was a student there in the early 80s. I loved it then and I love it now – the skyline has been completely transformed, there are new buildings everywhere but somehow the city has retained its unique charm and continues to have a real buzz and edge. I also managed to take in a great Jill Scott gig at the Academy down by the university.

The set book for the competition this year was this:

The Somme: An Eyewitness History'
288 pages, with 16 pages of black and white photographs

“Commissioned by the Folio Society to commemorate the ninetieth anniversary of the battle of the Somme, this magnificent and moving book relives the most terrible military campaign in British history through the accounts of participants from both sides, from the generals at the headquarters to the ordinary soldiers in the trenches.”

I thought that there were many terrific interpretations, not least one copy of the book bound as a kitbag complete with whistle and leather pouch (by Shelley Richards, probably my personal favourite in the whole competition); there was much use of representations of poppies, mud and barbed wire, others more understatedly had names of the fallen in gilt or blind. Two of the prizes my colleague Michael Silverman and I awarded were for books other than the set book however. I’m told that lettering is just about the most difficult aspect of binding and it has to be said that a number of entries were let down by it, making Laurence Worms’ (Ash Rare Books) lettering prize all the more essential.

It was all in stark contrast to last year’s entries when the set book was A Book of Mediterranean Foods and Other Writings by Elizabeth David, also published by The Folio Society, 2005. Particularly striking was a copy of the book bound by Mary Norwood with a rather beautiful silver fish appearing to be leaping through it:

(Image courtesy of the British Library)

Here is a list of the 2007 prizewinners:

The Mansfield Medal for Best Book in the Competition
Dominic Riley

Folio Society prize for the Set Book
1st Prize: Dominic Riley
2nd Prize: Ann Tout

The Clothworkers' Prize for Open Choice Book
1st Prize: Dominic Riley
2nd Prize: Kaori Maki

DB award for Forwarding
Simon Haigh

DB award for Finishing
Mariko Whiteway

The Arthur Johnson Award (judged by Bernard Middleton)
Simeon Glyn Jones

The Elizabeth Greenhill award for Gold Tooling
Pamela Richmond

The Ash Rare Books Lettering award
Margaret Willmer

The J. Hewit & Sons prize
Derek Hood

The Harmatan Leather Ltd prize
Yuko Matsuno

The Judges award (donated by Maggs Bros)
Kaori Maki

The Shepherds Falkiner Fine Papers prize
Andrew Brown

Four Highly Commended Certificates (given by Antiquarian Booksellers Association)
Judith Ellis
Vivien Frank
Tatjana Gretschmann
Shelley Richards