A @antiquaries.bsky.social display of early-printed books on witchcraft, death & the occult just wasn't enough for #halloween, so I also dressed up as an early-printed book. 💀

#antiquaries #rarebooks #print #macabre #woodcut #broadside #library #spooky #witchcraft #oldbooks #history

Fakes and forgeries out on display today at @antiquaries.bsky.social for our April Fool's themed Open Friday 🎉 Including real medieval pilgrim badges and Victorian 'Billy and Charley' forgeries!

#fakes #forgeries #archaeology #antiquaries

Some of our @antiquaries.bsky.social treasures out on display for our special "Illuminated" Open Friday today ✨💖🌟 Open until 4pm!

As part of our spring illuminations celebration tomorrow I've also been looking for modern books to show alongside the medieval orginals. These 1860s books on Illuminating are like works of art in their own right, with decorated gold bindings & wood-engraved or chromolithiographed plates.

Happy birthday to the 3rd revision of Magna Carta, 800 years old today! 🎉🎂🥳 (yes, we are having cake to mark the occasion - appropriately distanced, of course!)

#magnacarta #magnacarta800 #magnacarta1225 #specialcollections #archives #manuscripts #medieval #medievalhistory #socantiquaries

From the latest @britishlibrary.bsky.social newsletter... not a manuscript! Of all the places who'd mix those up... 🤐😅

#earlyprint #printed #rarebooks #broadside #print #16thcentury #tudor

This week's surprise book find @antiquaries.bsky.social: a lovely gold-tooled copy of a 1580 handbook of French verbs, with these charming 18th-century coloured drawings of fruits (and a broom?). Perhaps those of Lucy Strong, who signed "her booke" at the back.

#herbook #rarebooks #printedbook

Great @efdss.bsky.social lecture tonight by Dr Peter Harrop on "prog folk" and different ways of thinking about modern folklore(sque) customs, art, radicalism, inclusivity vs. first wave of folk revival... a lot to digest and ponder!

A few nice 17th-century bindings on printed books one of my volunteers is working on, adding Albert Way FSA's ownership provenance to our library catalogue. Always a good surprise to find a contemporary binding (especially armorial) when pulling a rather dismal burgundy box off the shelf!

A glorious day at Whittlesea Straw Bear festival yesterday, full of morris, merriment and music in the winter sun 🌾❄️ And, of course, rather a lot of real ale!

Some fabulous things in the Medieval Women @britishlibrary.bsky.social exhibition. One to revisit again, I think. I feel vindicated in my dislike for ice skating, now knowing its patron saint Lidwina of Schiedam (1380-1433) is also the patron of chronic pain!

Love this printer's device of Joanne's Oporinus, Basel (1559 ed. of Bale's Illustruim Maioris Britannaie Scriptorum). The Greek poet Arion stands on an dolphin whilst playing a lira de braccio, a sort of large proto-violin with extra drone strings. The dolphin looks distinctly unimpressed...

A late-1600s Burying-in-Woollen affidavit... the only one I've seen on vellum! It looks like parts have been scraped - possibly reused? Given its pretty dishevelled state, maybe it was pinned up somewhere. All very intriguing. Love those crude skull and shroud woodcuts! ☠️🍬

Now I have an account on a non-Muskian platform, I can get back on sharing Cool Things from the collections 🙌 🎉 Last week I found this 49cm tall engraving of a monument for Henry, Prince of Wales, d.1612, by Richard Haydock. As far as I can tell it's unique - haven't found any other references!