FABS 2016 pics: San Francisco Public Library Special Collections

Photos submitted by Terry Shockey

Rowfant Club

The Rowfant Club is looking forward to an exciting season in 2015-2016 in terms of speakers for our Wednesday dinner gatherings as well as our Friday Lunch programs.

Speakers on Wednesday evenings are experts from all over the world in various book-related fields; authors, critics, collectors , librarians and others who will discuss related museum issues as well as printing and papermaking who will enrich our evenings with their presentations.  

Our Wednesday programs have been bringing speakers from outside Rowfant while Friday Lunch speakers are members of the club. Fridays talks cover a wide range of interests and expertise of our members.

While our speaker lists are complete and we are ready to begin another season as The Rowfant Club approaches its 125^th anniversary year in 2017. During the summer we have no Friday or Wednesday programs, but that does not mean we were not busy. A great deal of maintenance work occupied many of us thisd last summer as we continued to care for our very special club house which was built in 1848 and is among the oldest structures in Cuyahoga County. And of course there’s always a lot of care and cataloging of our library and other collections.

The Roxburghe Club of San Francisco

[The Newsletter Editor apologizes profusely for the unintended omission of this entry from the Winter 2016 issue, which was submitted in a timely fashion by the Club]

   The Fall/Winter Roxburghe Club of San Francisco’s 2015 season was launched in September with an address by the collector, and prominent psychiatrist to astronauts, Nick Kanas, M.D., “Who Invented the Solar System? from Plato to Pluto & Beyond.“ The October meeting presented Lorna Price, former Senior Editor, History of Art Department, University of California, Berkeley on her book, “The Plan of St Gall in Brief,” which was written as a follow up to the legendary UC Press’s 1982 publication of the three-volume set, “The Plan of St Gall” by Walter Horn and Ernest Born. Lorna Price’s talk coincided with the celebration of The Book Club of California’s recent publication, “Architects and Artists: The Work of Ernest and Esther Born.”

   To continue this brief cartographic theme, in November Roxburghe Club member Leonard Rothman, M.D. presented an overview of his collection, “Maps of the Holy Land, 100 C.E.—1800.” Dr. Rothman’s collection is being digitally reproduced by Stanford University and will soon be available for viewing through the David Rumsey Center/Stanford University website.

   At the traditional December “Printer’s Gala” we celebrated the completion of The Roxburghe Club of San Francisco Archive, 1928--2015. This project was spearheaded by Henry Snyder, librarian of The Book Club of California, with assistance by Mark Knudsen and Norman McKnight, two local printers who took on the the tedious job of sorting through publications, keepsakes, books, membership lists, etc, going back to 1928. We could not be more grateful for this team’s dedication to this project and for their excellent work!

   In June 2016 we look forward to being part of the welcoming committee for the FABS Study Tour, 2016 in San Francisco, June 15-19.

Annual Conference of the ESA

Politics, Patriotism & Protest

The Ephemera Society of America will host its 36th annual conference and fair in  March 2016 - Politics, Patriotism & Protest

The Ephemera Society of America (ESA) is pleased to announce its 36th annual conference, "Politics, Patriotism & Protest" on March 17-20 at the Hyatt Regency Greenwich Hotel in Old Greenwich, CT. The conference examines the use of ephemera in promoting political, patriotic, and protest movements, emphasizing such issues as race, gender, and war. Cost to attend the conference is $50 for members and $60 for non-members.  For details on the conference and to purchase tickets online: http://www.ephemerasociety.org/36.html Additionally, we are offering FABS a “Friends of the Ephemera Society” admission rate of $10 for the Weekend or $7 for Sunday only for the Ephemera Fair, held on March 19-20 during the conference weekend.    To obtain tickets  http://bit.ly/ESA36friends2

About the Ephemera Society of America

The Ephemera Society of America, Inc. is a non-profit organization formed in 1980 to cultivate and encourage interest in ephemera and the history identified with it; to further the understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment of ephemera by people of all ages, backgrounds, and levels of interest; to promote the personal and institutional collection, preservation, exhibition, and research of ephemeral materials; to serve as a link among collectors, dealers, institutions, and scholars; and to contribute to the cultural life of those who have an interest in our heritage as a nation or a people, both nationally and internationally.