General

Update

Another couple of years pass (largely unproductively!)

Noticing that the last Bulletin posted here was XL, I should note that we are now up to XLIV, they can all be seen here

Categories (on the left hand side of the website) have been reduced due to declining levels of stock (both generally and in those specific categories). Stock updates remain sporadic

We have applied to rejoin the PBFA, so we hope to be exhibiting at a couple of fairs this year (presuming they let me back in), so I will update the fairs section (or not!) when applicable

General

Instagram

So, we have finally got round to posting some stuff on Instagram, generally not things for sale, but items from the variety of small collections we have here at ZHQ, and other items we find interesting. Have a look at #zeteticbooks

General

Bulletin XXVI

Bulletin XXVI – Recent Acquisitions

New Bulletin now available –  including economics, extra-parliamentary activity in Germany and France, Patty Hearst and the SLA, a pro-Chartist broadside and a (timely) squatters movement xmas card

Books

Bulletin XXIV

Bulletin XXIV arrives – mainly letters by some of the protagonists of some of the revolutions of 1848, including Kossuth and Louis Blanc. Also included are interesting documents relating to British volunteers for Garibaldi and a document for Italian political prisoners which attracted the attention of Mazzini. Click on the cover below to view

Bulletin XXIV

Books

Bulletin XXI

We haven’t posted here for a long time, as nobody reads it, but will endeavour to post more regularly. A new bulletin is available, now up to number twenty-one, a short one with twenty recent acquisitions including mining disasters, shipwrecks, riots, demonstrations and gold printing – click on the cover below…

Bulletin XXI – Recent Acquisitions

Books

New Year – New Bulletin

Happy new year to everyone

The first Bulletin of the year, on the first day of the year, is Bulletin XVIII, a collection of trade cards and tickets, illustrating the commercial and cultural life of mid-nineteenth century Glasgow.

Bulletin XVIII

Almost from the cradle to the grave, we find amongst others, trade cards for tailors, sail makers, shoe makers, boiler makers, taverns, cabinet makers, confectioners, lithographers, painters, paper hangers and undertakers.

Cultural pursuits include musical concerts, art exhibitions, soirees, educational classes, philosophy and art classes.

Glasgow was effectively the Second City of the Empire, with several industries at varying times employing large numbers of people, including the linen industry, locomotive manufacturing and of course shipbuilding (See Meighan, Glasgow – A History)

Biblio-ephemera

Bristol Bookbinders Society

Bristol Bookbinders Society

A recent acquisition for the biblio-ephemera collection here at ZHQ, an attractively engraved trade union card for the Bristol Bookbinders Society. The card has not been filled out, but notes that the bearer ‘having served a legal Apprenticeship to the Trade is entitled to participate in all its advantages’.  The Union was formed in March 1831, and their motto was ‘We are United to Support, But not Combined to Injure’.

The Historical Directory of Trade Unions – Volume Five, notes that the rules “drawn up in that year are still available, but no subsequent information has been found”. The Jaffray collection in the BL, (Jaffray was himself a bookbinder and interested in the history of his trade and particularly trade union and welfare issues) holds a document noting the cash amount held for the Society ending March 1833 (probably just the year ending for the Society rather than the end of its existence), so we know it lasted until at least 1833, but I haven’t been able to find out anything further about it.

Howe refers to Jaffray’s collection in his A List of London Bookbinders 1648-1815, but Jaffray himself does not appear in Packer’s Bookbinders of Victorian London, so he probably always worked for other bookbinders.

The later Bookbinders and Machine Ruler’s Consolidated Union used almost the same motto, ‘United to Support but Not Combined to Injure’