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sibyllacumae.bsky.social
@sibyllacumae.bsky.social
1.3K followers 580 following 1.7K posts
rare bookseller, renaissance platonist, memory worker, kitchen gardener. now based in philly.
newsletter: https://twohalfsheets.substack.com
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social
Spoiler alert: Olympia is a robot
Nathaniel had totally forgotten the very existence of Clara, whom he had once loved; his mother, Lothaire - all had vanished from his memory; he lived only for Olympia, with whom he sat for hours every day, uttering strange fantastical stuff about his love, about the sympathy that glowed to life, about the affinity of souls, to all of which Olympia listened with great devotion. From the very bottom of his desk he drew out all that he had ever written. Poems, fantasies, visions, romances, tales - this stock was daily increased by all sorts of extravagant sonnets, stanzas and canzoni, and he read them all tirelessly to Olympia for hours on end. Never had he known such an admirable listener. She neither embroidered nor knitted, she never looked out of the window, she fed no favorite bird, she played neither with lapdog nor pet cat, she did not twist a slip of paper or anything else in her hand, she was not obliged to suppress a yawn by a gentle forced cough. In short, she sat for hours, looking straight into her lover's eyes, without stirring, and her glance became more and more lively and animated Only when Nathaniel rose at last, and kissed her hand and her lips did she say, 'Ah, ah!' to which she added: 'Good night, dearest.' 'Oh deep, noble mind!' cried Nathaniel in his own room, 'you, you alone, dear one, fully understand me.'
December 17, 2025 at 6:21 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
👑
His next, barely more palatable option was to join his elder brother James in his Boston printing works. Josiah had whipped Benjamin regularly, and now James beat him too, for smuggling saucy comment pieces into the New-England Courant under the alias of a worthy widow called Silence Dogood – the first of many noms de plume that Benjamin adopted for his squibs and satires.
December 16, 2025 at 5:30 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
And our latest print catalog arrived today! Bruce McKittrick Rare Books Catalog 75 🤗
December 12, 2025 at 7:39 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
Working in customer service
Screenshots from 30 Rock, showing Tracy Jordan telling Liz Lemon “woah, you watch your mouth before I show you the back of my hand.” On the back of his hand, a note taped that says “please be nice to me”
December 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
At the December meeting of the Philobiblon Club every year, members share favorite items from their collections. This year I talked about my copy of the first American bookseller catalogue devoted exclusively to incunabula and E. Miriam Lone, the lady who wrote it.
OP standing in a green room holding a book before an audience of engaged looking bibliophiles
December 10, 2025 at 2:41 AM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
🤗
Magic, Wonder & The Occult rare book catalogue cover with a chiromantic hand
December 5, 2025 at 3:41 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
Why… yes! It does!
This way of perceiving social reality—and particularly a person’s reading life—may seem inane, even deranged.
December 4, 2025 at 12:40 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
The Getty is one of the richest art institutions in the world and I got paid $14 an hour when I started working there 🥴 they do good work but they ain’t need my help
Fundraising email from the Getty Fund
December 3, 2025 at 1:15 AM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
I read the Invention of Love when I was 17 and it’s why I studied classics, why I went to graduate school and part of why I left, and part of probably all the decisions I’ve made since then.
“Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light. Dante reserved a place in his Inferno for those who wilfully live in sadness - sullen in the sweet air, he says. Your 'honour' is all shame and timidity and compliance. Pure of stain! But the artist is the secret criminal in our midst. He is the agent of progress against authority. you are right to be a scholar. A scholar is all scruple, an artist is none. The artist must lie, cheat, deceive, be untrue to nature and contemptuous of history. I made my life into my art and it was an unqualified success. The blaze of my immolation threw its light into every corner of the land where uncounted young men sat each in his own darkness. What would I have done in Megara!? - think” “what I would have missed! I awoke the imagination of the century. I banged Ruskin's and Pater's heads together, and from the moral severity of one and the aesthetic soul of the other I made art a philosophy that can look the twentieth century in the eye. I had genius, brilliancy, daring, I took charge of my own myth. I dipped my staff into the comb of wild honey. I tasted forbidden sweetness and drank the stolen waters. I lived at the turning point of the world where everything was waking up new - the New Drama, the New Novel, New Journalism, New Hedonism, New Paganism, even the New Woman. Where were you when all this was happening?”
November 29, 2025 at 7:02 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
Back briefly to show you this great mossy rock
Moss on a rock
November 28, 2025 at 5:06 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
It’s so beautiful here
Young pine forest with trees covered in moss, ferns growing below
November 27, 2025 at 8:58 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
???? Sorry how did I miss this for 36 years ????
Screenshot of Bruce Willis with hair in a Renaissance outfit next to Cybil Shepherd also in Renaissance outfit
November 21, 2025 at 9:15 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
Inside me are two wolves
Cover of Horst Bredekamp’s The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine Cover of Angela Carter’s The Sadeian Woman
November 14, 2025 at 7:55 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
November 11, 2025 at 1:42 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
😭
Screenshot of weather app saying it feels like 20 degrees F
November 11, 2025 at 1:33 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
Face reflecting the general bewilderment of the book fair
OP standing looking confused but happy in a booth full of antiquarian books
November 9, 2025 at 10:48 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
Sometimes I have rosacea flare ups I’d like to hide, plus I really enjoyed the level of reverent respect I seemed to inspire in otherwise rowdy children last night
OP in skeleton onesie, ballgown skirt, and long black veil holding a bowl of candy on her front porch.
November 1, 2025 at 4:06 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
Jack o lanterns not carved and lit yet (they rot really quickly here) but very festive!
October 31, 2025 at 3:23 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
Choreomania at the Mutter Museum ☺️ happy Halloween 🎃
OP dressed as a peasant in a fake candlelit room with a facsimile of Vesalius’s Fabrica
October 31, 2025 at 3:44 AM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
Yes everything is awful. But I try to keep my spirits up. Who is coming with me?
Invitation to Choreomania, a dancing sickness themed dance party at the Mütter Museum
October 27, 2025 at 8:41 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
It’s now my yearly tradition to go to NYC for Grolier Club Halloween + to pick up our autumn auction purchases. Love to show up at the collection desk in a skeleton onesie. Truly I am living the life of my dreams.
OP in a wood paneled room wearing a skeleton bodysuit
October 25, 2025 at 7:36 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
I am “excited about unusual radishes” years old
Chopped up watermelon radish on a cutting board, bright pink on the inside and pale Greek outside
October 17, 2025 at 6:59 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
I love Philadelphia?
Invitation to event: “do you have an uncontrollable urge to dance that no one can cure?”
October 15, 2025 at 12:18 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
Nine years ago this week was the opening of The Art of Alchemy at the Getty Research Institute—the first exhibition I assistant curated and one of the most exciting and fun projects I’ve ever worked on 🥹 yet when I look at these photos, I feel like I was such a babe in the woods.
OP holding hands with a hardboard cutout of the god Mercury and her lead curator in front of the title wall of The Art of Alchemy OP on the terrace of the Getty with a large crowd at the opening of the Art of Alchemy
October 14, 2025 at 7:21 PM
sibyllacumae.bsky.social
My front porch is full of pumpkins. It’s stormy. I’ve been simmering bone broth overnight for soup today. a u t u m n 🎃 i s 🎃 h e r e.
Side view or front porch with 9 assorted pumpkins, hay bale, cornstalks
October 12, 2025 at 11:30 AM