Booked for the Evening Bid Items
Manuel Tzoc, Pequeña voz, 2023
Manuel Tzoc, Pequeña voz, 2023
Manuel Gabriel Tzoc Bucup is a K’iche’ Maya poet and artist whose work explores unusual book structures, intersectional identities and LGBTQ life in Guatemala, and the sensory experience of language. The Newberry is renowned for holding the oldest known copy of the Popol Wuj in K’iche’, and this work enhances the K’iche’ presence here. Pequeña voz is an “objeto poético” comprised of a miniature accordion-fold book of one word, in a golden case; the Newberry’s edition spells out “corazón” or “heart”.
Selected By: Will Hansen, Roger and Julie Baskes Vice President for Collections and Library Services and Curator of Americana
Like it: $50
Make it your Valentine: $100
Kim Gullion Stewart, Making and Remaking Memory, 2022
Kim Gullion Stewart, Making and Remaking Memory, 2022
This beadwork map combines Métis cultural art forms with contemporary art practices as a way of exploring Métis identity and knowledge systems. This piece is part of a countermapping series featuring beadwork overlays situated on cartographic representations of land—in this case, a 1950s Dent School Atlas vintage map of western Canada.
Selected By: Dave Weimer, Robert A. Holland Curator of Maps
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $725
Collection of Tunisian dances from the World's Columbian Exposition, composed by Ali Ben Salomone, approximately 1893
Collection of Tunisian dances from the World's Columbian Exposition, composed by Ali Ben Salomone, approximately 1893
A rare and complete series of twelve pieces of sheet music composed by a Jewish-Tunisian musician and sold at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. Each piece is in large format with a different illustrated cover and features the same chromolithographed illustrated diamond-shaped label stating: “1893/Columbian Exposition/Tunisie/Souvenir des Souks.”
Selected By: Alison Hinderliter, Lloyd Lewis Curator of Modern Manuscripts and Selector of Modern Music
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $800
Manuscript Journal of an Amateur Meteorologist, Agronomist and Journalist from Illinois, 1860-1863.
Manuscript Journal of an Amateur Meteorologist, Agronomist and Journalist from Illinois, 1860-1863.
These 114 sheets, each written in a neat and meticulous hand, are the work of an amateur meteorologist living in DeKalb County, IL in the mid-19th century. While the author’s identity remains anonymous, details from his personal life are interspersed in recordings of meteorological phenomena; life on the farm with his wife and three children, church meetings, a land dispute with his neighbor, and the election of Abraham Lincoln all warrant notes.
Selected By: Matt Rutherford, Curator of Genealogy and Local History, and Jo Ellen McKillop Dickie, Selector for Reference and Reference Services Librarian
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $1,200
Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger, Coffee Book, 2020
Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger, Coffee Book, 2020
The Chicago art team and married couple Miller & Shellabarger have for years kept a record of "the daily ritual of sharing coffee." They use the pages of a blank commercially-produced journal or sketchbook as a coaster for their morning coffee cups, one page per day, with no additional text commentary or imagery: the stains and rings of the cups are their own record of each day. Miller & Shellabarger refer to their work as documenting “the rhythms of human relationships, speaking both to common experiences of intimacy as well as the specifics of queer identities.” On display will be the Coffee Book recording the morning coffees of January 25 through August 30, 2020.
Selected By: Will Hansen, Roger and Julie Baskes Vice President for Collections and Library Services and Curator of Americana
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $1,275
Sweet Lips; Savage Heart, J.A. Little, Jason Wesaw, 2013
Sweet Lips; Savage Heart, J.A. Little, Jason Wesaw, 2013
Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi) created these transfer prints based on original historical photographs by J.A. Little from the late 19th or early 20th century. Little’s photographs depicted the cultural lives of the Potowatomi of southwestern Michigan. Wesaw has hand-colored a photo of two Potawatomi people posing after a public dance in Saugatuck, Michigan. In Wesaw’s words, the prints “are intended to represent the ways the Potowatomi have experienced mockery and racial inequities in the 19th century through today,” while asserting that “we [now] control the narrative of our people’s story and culture.”
Selected By: Analú López, Ayer Librarian and Assistant Curator of American Indian and Indigenous Studies
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $1,700
Digitizing the Hernán Cortés Volumes
Hernan Cortes, hand-colored map of Tenochtitlan, Praeclara Ferdinandi Cortesii de noua maris oceani Hyspania narratio..., 1524
The 1524 Latin edition of Hernán Cortés’ third letter to the Emperor Carlos V with its stunning, hand-colored map of Tenochtitlán (VAULT Ayer 655.51 .C8 1524d) is consistently one of the most requested items in the Newberry collection. It is one of four volumes in the Newberry’s collections of Cortes’ letters to the Emperor published in 1524. These letters relate the Spanish invasion of the Mexica empire and the capture of Tenochtitlán. With the digitization of these items, researchers near and far will be able to compare similarities and differences in all four copies: two copies of the Latin edition of the second letter, a Latin edition of the third letter, and the Italian translation of the second and third letters and its map. These comparisons are crucial for understanding the reception and transmission of information about Mexico in Europe. These join two manuscript copies of Cortes’ letters already in the digital collections (VAULT Ayer MS 1072 and VAULT Ayer MS 1071).
Selected By: Jennifer Dalzin, Director, Digital Initiatives and Services
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $2,500
Cataloging the Robert Christensen Collection
Robert Christensen Collection
The bulk of this collection, which boasts approximately 500 titles, consists of early to mid-20th-century house plans, mostly from Midwestern companies, and many quite rare. Also included are trade catalogs for a variety of home and farm-related building materials and fixtures such as radiators, windows, bathtubs, and grain silos. The materials aid users in home and building history research , as well as providing a wealth of information about social history and material culture. The collection also documents a variety of sophisticated and cutting-edge printing techniques and contains many challenges to cataloging, including inserted materials such as sales leaflets, price lists, and order forms. Received as a donation in 2022, the collection is currently being cataloged.
Selected By: Alan Leopold, Director of Collection Services and Megan Kelly, Head of Cataloging Services
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $3,500
Quaker marriage certificate between John Bringhurst and Rosina Matern, 1682 June 2
Quaker marriage certificate between John Bringhurst and Rosina Matern, 1682 June 2
A parchment marriage certificate between printer John Bringhurst and Rosina Matern, certifying a wedding ceremony held during a Quaker meeting in London. The certificate is autographed by Bringhurst and Matern, as well as 44 Quaker men and 26 Quaker women who witnessed the wedding. Among the witnesses are several prominent printers and publishers of London and notable figures in Quaker history, including Andrew Sowle, successor of Bringhurst as printer of Quaker publications; Tace Sowle, daughter of Andrew and successor to his printing business; and William Bradford, printer in colonial Pennsylvania and New York.
Selected By: Jill Gage, Custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing and Bibliographer for British Literature and History
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $5,000
X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis
Korean bronze and wooden type, 1700
The Newberry has recently acquired an X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) analyzer that will require specialized technical training to operate. Training in XRF analysis would enable Conservation staff to identify potentially harmful elements, such as arsenic and/or vermillion, found in collection binding pigments, and apply special handling protocols to the identified items. The Newberry could then join partner institutions in contributing analysis results to the Poison Book Project. This technology would also allow for analysis of materials including the Newberry’s ancient Korean type to help characterize the metal alloy for further research and publications.
Selected By: Kim Nichols, Director of Conservation
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $6,000
French 18th c. almanac proofs with occasional risqué romances, 1751-1821
French 18th c. almanac proofs with occasional risqué romances, 1751-1821
This newly acquired set of extravagant almanacs and their components is notable for the sheer amount of material it contains. This collection represents 39 almanacs, with twelve complete sets. They include suites of elaborate illustrations, title pages, uncut sheets and proof impressions before lettering. Especially exciting are the impressions in red ink and the uncut pattern for a movable almanac. Within these pages are descriptions not only of the upcoming year, but also the processes to create further almanacs, and marginalia including poetry and drawings.
Selected By: Suzanne Karr Schmidt, George Amos Poole III Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $8,500
Collection of 293 Italian Broadsides
Collection of 293 Italian Broadsides
In the 1960s the Newberry acquired a group of over 200 Italian broadsides of mainly 17th-century Roman poetry on the occasion of religious festivals and other events. The library recently had the unique opportunity to acquire 170 more broadsides from the same 18th or early 19th-century collector's album, thus reuniting them with their former context. Folio-sized, many are produced by printers that are not well represented at the Newberry, and most are of great typographic interest (borders, central woodcuts, etc.).
The Newberry also recently acquired the Martinengo dalle Palle collection of death notices, 119 broadsides produced primarily for members of the Martinengo family and other families of the Venetian nobility throughout the 19th century. The collection provides an important illustration of the change in printing techniques, materials and styles, from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. The broadsides are printed on different paper stocks and colors and use different colored inks, including gold and silver. Over twenty different presses are represented (most with no other work held by the Newberry).
Selected By: Jill Gage, Custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing and Bibliographer for British Literature and History and Suzanne Karr Schmidt, George Amos Poole III Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $26,000
Additional Information
If you have any questions about these items, or the Booked for the Evening event, please contact Jennifer Shulman at shulmanj@newberry.org or (312) 255-3594. If you are unable to attend the event but wish to support an item listed, we will happily take gifts over the phone or email in advance.