Bibliographica

"The physical archaeology of the book."

Bibliographica is a working course in reading the antiquarian book as an object. Before a book is a text, it is a folded sheet of paper, marked, gathered, sewn, and bound by particular hands in a particular place and decade. Every one of those acts leaves evidence in the thing itself. This course teaches how to read that evidence directly, from the paper up, rather than from received trade lore.

INDEX BIBLIOGRAPHICA

I. The Folded Sheet — format and imposition
II. Signs at the Foot — signatures and signature marks
III. The Formula — collation and its notation
IV. Catchword and Press Figure — the little numbers, told apart
V. Cancels and Surgery — detecting the doctored copy
VI. Chain and Wire — the structure of paper
VII. Against the Light — watermarks as evidence
VIII. The Face of the Type — founts as dating evidence
IX. Cut and Bitten — woodcut against intaglio
X. Boards and Backs — binding as argument
XI. The Life of the Copy — provenance
XII. How Rare Is Rare — census and valuation

What it covers.

Across twelve modules it builds from first principles. It begins with the single folded sheet, the master fact from which format, signatures, catchwords, and collation all descend, then moves outward to the physical witnesses that let a book be dated and judged: the structure of paper and its watermarks, the face of the type, the difference between a woodcut and an engraving, the evidence held in a binding, and the life a copy has led through its provenance. It closes where the market begins, with rarity, census, and value, and with how to build a defensible argument about how rare a book truly is.

Who is it for?

Collectors, dealers, cataloguers, and students of the book who want to stop taking descriptions on trust and start reading the object for themselves. No prior training in bibliography is assumed. A curiosity about how books are made, and a willingness to hold one up to the light, is enough to begin.