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leocadogan.com
Leo Cadogan
@leocadogan.com
2.2K followers 1.7K following 1.1K posts
Antiquarian bookseller, London. (ABA/ILAB).

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Definitely walking towards the finishing line of some admin chores, but next week should see me I hope trotting along again (with some interesting cataloguing).
Intaglio fold-out plate: veterinary diagram with horse at centre of circle.
November 9, 2025 at 11:22 PM
leocadogan.com
Mad Victorian facade of the Holloway Road in north London. Seven different external window frame designs.
As described. Extends along three door numbers. Stone window frames, white stucco. Shops at floor level. Window designs include Romanesque.
November 8, 2025 at 4:11 PM
leocadogan.com
Part of my job is to read indexes of old books looking for interesting things. Here be genitalia worship, it seems.
17th-cent printed index including “Genitalia adorare”.
November 8, 2025 at 11:50 AM
leocadogan.com
Loved this movie.
Headline: “Pauline Collins, actor who starred in Shirley Valentine, dies aged 85”. Photo of Collins receiving a royal award.
November 6, 2025 at 8:27 PM
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I love hand-made manuscript pamphlets, even when the contents are taken from printed books. Examining my purchases at the Chelsea book fair.
First page and inside front cover. Stab-stitching. Card cover. Titled “A vocabulary of the uncommon words used in the Parish of Halifax”. Stab stitching (partially broken).
November 3, 2025 at 3:45 PM
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“The Tory Notion of Peace & Goodwill. The government’s record abroad 1895-1900”. “Wars & massacres are coloured red”. 1900 election poster, seen at Timothy Millett @ the LAPADA fair. I believe he has sold it.
Colour-printed world map, framed.
November 2, 2025 at 1:08 PM
leocadogan.com
Typographical decoration, Madrid, c.1732.
Two manicules each pointing on opposite direction on either side of a small cross with below three groups of three asterisks to two designs. Small cross within parentheses flanked on each side by manicule to same design, each pointing in opposite direction. Two groups of six asterisks to two designs, with below, a signature (A4) and a guideword (FA-).
November 1, 2025 at 10:35 PM
leocadogan.com
Hippocrates in a coat embroidered with plants. Valencia, 1742.
Intaglio. Circle at corner of larger print, showing bearded man wearing a hat and reading a book, wearing an embroidered coat, labelled ‘HIPOCRATES’. The central image is set within a large circle with numbers around the edge (a small portion of this last is visible).
November 1, 2025 at 10:15 PM
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Good to go at the good old Chelsea book fair.
Two bays of wooden shelving, set up.
October 31, 2025 at 1:47 PM
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Time, money and education. leocadogan.com/Chelsea25
Front page. "Leo Cadogan Rare Books" [Frollicking bookseller logo] "Time, money and education (and a few other things). For the Chelsea Book Fair, 2025".
October 31, 2025 at 9:15 AM
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Dining room tables are for measuring things.
Broadside with a metal ruler on it with other folded broadsides, laptop and pot plant, on dining room table.
October 28, 2025 at 10:50 AM
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Contents of a parcel of Spanish books that has just arrived. There is simply no such thing as too much vellum.
Pile of eight books, the bottom one bound in leather, the other seven in vellum.
October 27, 2025 at 11:24 PM
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I’ve photographed it before, but this finger still tickles me.
Open book in a white photography cradle under lights (one visible), on RHS in the text is a large woodcut finger.
October 27, 2025 at 10:14 PM
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Some French red goatskin from a princess’s library is coming to Chelsea …
Row of four front covers in red goatskin with gilt decoration and supralibros, in a photography cradle.
October 27, 2025 at 5:33 PM
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Coins of Anna Maria II, the Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg. Illustration in a broadside of Munich, 1679.
October 26, 2025 at 10:26 PM
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Statutes of a house for Jewish Christian converts (Bologna 1662). The title has left an impression on the inside cover of the cartonnage wrapper.
Title-page, “Constitutioni, ordini, e leggi della Casa de’ Catecumeni di Bologna riformati l’anno MDXCIII”. Bologna, per Giacomo Monti 1662. Woodcut illustration surrounded by typographical decoration.
October 26, 2025 at 1:11 PM
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Almanac spines, Paris 1820s. The tool used on the middle and right seems to be the same (the one on the left is a variant design).
Three spines, red, green and red goatskin, gilt spine with panels with designs made of panels featuring straighter then more curved lines and then back to straighter [etc.]
October 25, 2025 at 4:27 PM
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Printer’s collation statement for a 66-leaf duodecimo (12mo.) “ABCDEF. All sheets are complete except for F, which is half a sheet”. 12 x 5 + 6.
Colophon leaf. In Roman letter “Regestum. [New line] ABCDEF. [new line] Omnia sunt integra folia praeter F, quod est semifolium”. Below this a Jesuit woodcut device, then “ROMAE, [new line] [italics] Apud Aloysium Zannettum, [new line] MDCIII.” [Printed horizontal line divider] [roman letter] “SUPERIORUM PERMISSU”.
October 24, 2025 at 12:16 PM
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Tomorrow’s job will be cataloguing this brocade paper-covered beauty. It’s a late 18th-cent woman’s death inventory so content promises to be interesting too.
Folio in half-vellum and brocade paper boards, titled to spine “Inventarium Rebecca Maria Drexelin”.
October 21, 2025 at 11:46 PM
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Chin up?
Early modern ink caricature of someone with enormous chin.
October 21, 2025 at 11:24 PM
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Getting ready for this!
Sticker for The ABA Chelsea Rare Book Fair, 31 October - 1 November 2025, Chelsea Old Town Hall.
October 21, 2025 at 2:24 PM
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Pinksky
Pink cloudy sunset sky above a traditional London early 20th-cent underground station (arched windows, blood-red tiles).
October 20, 2025 at 5:04 PM
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C for cavallo (horse). Woodcut capital used in a book of Verona (Girolamo Discepolo), 1592.
A finely shaded horse, its head turned back, inhabits this initial C. Italic letterpress to right hand side and below.
October 20, 2025 at 2:51 PM
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Really sad to see Catalogue of the Goldsmiths Library of Economic Literature removed from open shelves at the @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This happened also with Sabin ‘Bibliotheca Americana’ a few years ago.
Photograph of an empty shelf.
October 20, 2025 at 10:42 AM
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This bird also appears in the book’s printer’s device (Paris, de Marnef brothers) - so they’ve effectively branded the diagram!
Woodcut De Marnef printer’s device, featuring same bird as in Porphyrian Tree.
October 20, 2025 at 8:30 AM