One of my earliest followers on Twitter — and of my earliest follow backs on Twitter — was one @LuxMentis, also known as Ian J. Kahn, proprietor of Lux Mentis Antiquarian Books and president of the Maine Antiquarian Booksellers Association.
From his tweets, I knew Ian was passionate about books and very smart — so when he sent me a message asking if I would be his guest as a dinner for the National Collegiate Book Collecting Championships at the Library of Congress, I didn’t want to miss the chance to see what he was like in real life and to be introduced to his colleagues at the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America.
I’ll tell you more about those colleagues and about Ian in a minute. First I have to tell you about What I Saw at the Library of Congress. Originally, all of us attending had been promised a trip inside the Library’s Rare Book Vault, but as Rare Books Librarian Mark Dimunation was battling back pain, we were instead treated to a sit-down showing of treasures from that vault. We gathered at one end of the Lessing J. Rosenwald Room, which houses the “working library” of this rare-book collecting giant (more on some of Rosenwald’s treasures shortly).
Dimunation started by reminding us that the Library of Congress is built from one man’s book collection, and that man is Thomas Jefferson. The first treasure he showed us was a small volume bound in British tan leather — Mr. Jefferson’s personal copy of The Federalist Papers, including a front sheet covered in Mr. Jefferson’s own handwriting, detailing who was “Publius” on which essay (unfortunately, the various authors do not agree on all of the essays, leaving historians still battling it out on a few). We also gazed on another of Jefferson’s books and were let in on the secret of how to know if a book actually belonged to him. I can’t tell you that, now, because I will be busy checking out 18th-century books at every jumble sale, hoping that I find something similarly inscribed…
While Dimunation wanted to impart professional expertise and curiosity to the college students who won the ABAA prizes, I was merely along for the storytelling ride, so I can’t tell you all of the details about why particular collectors are so important to the rare-book world. I can tell you that the ext item he showed us was an impeccably preserved incunable, each page a large, gorgeous combination of text and illustration. When you actually remember that a book like this is the result of scores of intricately carved woodblocks, the mind boggles. Were the people who produced these beautiful objects the video gamers of yesteryear?
Those geeks of antiquity had to have had a hand in the folio-sized book Dimunation showed us next, a printed text full of colored charts and tables and working rotary paper navigation tools — all based on Euclidean geometry and all intended to help soldiers work out their armaments plans. Unfortunately, a year or so after this magnificent book was produced, Copernicus shared his astronomical findings with the world. Every calculation, measurement, and tool in the manuscript was suddenly false.
Next: A story to give you goosebumps — and a decidedly non-book Rare Book Room object
