Taschen's new "Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji" is expensive - €125 - but for what it is, absolutely outstanding value for money. Printed in an edition of 6000 copies, it uses state of the art printing and stunning book design to pay tribute to Hokusai's masterpiece. 1/
Even the shipping box is beautifully designed. Inside is a very large chitsu case with wonderful irridescent printing, reminiscent of the mica printing found in old deluxe Japanese printed books. Inside that is the oversized book itself, stitched Japanese style. 2/
The book gathers the finest impressions of Hokusai's woodblocks from institutions worldwide, and carefully reproduces them all, with the complete set of 36 large images alongside 114 color variations. 3/
Here are some photos of my own copy, which arrived at the Incunabula library this morning. This is a thrilling book, one of the most impressive Taschen editions I've seen. 4/
A few more photos- the first one shows the inside of the chitsu case - and a link to the Taschen website. 5/
Photos don't do full justice to the impression this book makes in real life - the shimmering, iridescent quality of the printing in particular is really remarkable. @TASCHEN have outdone themselves. 6/
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JEWISH PRINTING IN HEBREW, IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL, IN 1578.
This is third book printed in Eretz Israel, Rabbi Samuel Aripul's "Sar Shalom", printed in 1578 by Abraham & Eliezer Askkenazi at Safed (צְפַת Tsfat), the highest city in the Galilee, in what is today northern Israel. 1/
In 1553, the population of Safed consisted of 1121 Muslim households, and 716 Jewish households, which rose to 945 households in 1567. There were more than 7000 Jews in Safed in 1576 when Murad III issued an edict for the forced deportation of 1000 Jewish families to Cyprus. 2/
A Hebrew printing press was established in Safed in 1577 by Eliezer Ashkenazi and his son, Isaac of Prague. In 1584, there were 32 synagogues registered in the town of Safed. 3/
"The Superstitious Chorbaji" - an artist's book in an extraordinary three-part binding by the remarkable young Bulgarian bookbinder Kalin Daskalov, who works under the nom d'artiste of 'Stopan'. 1/
The book contains amuletic and protective spells, written in both Cyrillic and Glagolitic script, and is bound in three conjoined parts with woven strapwork, as imagined to have been once worn around the neck by a 17th century 'Chorbaji' (a kind of wealthy Bulgarian peasant). 2/
The texts - 5 in all - are interspersed with intricate totemic drawings, some within block-printed borders. Everything - binding, paper, text, printing, illumination, calligraphy - is created by Stopan himself. His father, an acclaimed silversmith, makes the silver fittings. 3/
John Heywood's 'The Spider and the Flie', begun in the 1530s, put aside for twenty years and finally published in 1556 is one of the most extraordinary combinations of illustration and text produced in the Tudor, or indeed any, era. 1/5
The allegorical verse fable, written in over 7,000 lines in rhyme royal, recounts (as well as depicting) the struggles of a fly caught in the web of a spider. Heywood's work is a complex parable of the political and religious disputes between Catholics and Protestants. 2/5
The most extraordinary of the plates are those double-page plates, printed from one or two blocks, that depict the massed armies and the war that ensues. The anthropomorphic personifications in the verse: the spider, fly, ant and butterfly, symbolize different protaganists. 3/5
THE EARLIEST WRITING IN BRITAIN
The earliest surviving writing from the British Isles isn't Anglo-Saxon, it isn't Roman and it isn't runic or ogham script - it's the inscriptions on Celtic coins from Iron-Age Britain. This coin dates to around 20BC and reads "COMMI F EPPILLV" 1/
The inscription on this gold quarter stater, COMMI F EPPILLV - Eppillus, son of Commius - refers to Eppillus (Celtic: "little horse"), a Roman client king of the Atrebates tribe, who reigned in the vicinity of modern day Chichester. 2/
Theodor Nelson's "Computer Lib / Dream Machines", Chicago 1974, bound tête-bêche.
Subtitled "You can and must understand computers NOW", 'Computer Lib' is regarded as the first book about the personal computer - it was published just before the release of the Altair 8800. 1/
This is the book that pioneered the democratisation of information technology, and was hugely influential on Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others. It was described by Howard Rheingold as "the best-selling underground manifesto of the microcomputer revolution". 2/
Loosely based on the Whole Earth Catalog, with which it shares certain characteristics, the work is divided into numerous densely packed sections, each featuring pull quotes, cartoons, photographs, diagrams, sidebars and multiple typefaces. 3/
This is all that remains of Zoli the Clown, a Jewish little person, once the most famous circus performer in Hungary, who perished, alongside 560 000 other Hungarian Jews, in the Holocaust.
We should remember him for the joy he brought, and his courage. This is his story. 1/
Zoltán Hirsch, "Zoli the Clown", was born on 6 Feb 1885, the third child of a family of Jewish merchants. Until the age of three he was treated for Rickets disease due to his small size. Later, his family moved to Pécs, where he became captivated by the world of the circus. 2/
Zoli spent his leisure time at his hometown Pécs’s major entertainment sites, the Schmitt Folk Arena Circus and the Pécs Vaudeville Theatre, where he obsessively attended all the shows and loitered backstage, eager to meet his idols, the acrobats & clowns who worked there. 3/