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The Collation

The Collation

Research and Exploration at the Folger

The Collation is a gathering of useful information and observations from Folger staff and researchers. Read more about this blog

"What manner o' thing is your crocodile?": August edition
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"What manner o' thing is your crocodile?": August edition

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Author
The Collation

Like last month’s crocodile mystery, this one has two levels of answers. The first, of course, is to identify what genre of thing this is. The second is to offer explanations for why this genre and this instance might be…

Q & A: Goran Proot, Curator of Rare Books
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Q & A: Goran Proot, Curator of Rare Books

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Author
The Collation

Goran Proot On June 1st, Goran Proot became the new Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Rare Books at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Now that he’s had a chance to settle in a bit, it’s time for us to introduce him…

How (not) to mend a tear
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How (not) to mend a tear

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Author
Erin Blake

Going through a box of early 19th-century playbills recently, I was puzzled to see something paper-clipped to an area of loss on the right-hand edge of a bill, as if someone had attached a little note to it: Playbill for…

Learning from readers
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Learning from readers

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Author
Sarah Werner

Sometimes the beauty of our blog is that we can share with you items in our collections: new acquisitions, recently restored works, or long-held pieces worth a closer look. Sometimes its beauty is that it makes it easy to share…

This post is brought to you by the letter L
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This post is brought to you by the letter L

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Author
Heather Wolfe

A cadel initial “L” with anthropomorphic features on leaf 2 of Augustine Vincent’s copy of Nomotechnia, by Henry Finch (1607) This letter L is an example of a cadel initial, or lettre cadeau, with anthropomorphic features; that is, it is…

Armorial bindings
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Armorial bindings

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Author
Sarah Werner

The reveal to this month’s crocodile mystery isn’t much of a reveal; both John Overholt and Philip Allfrey posted the answer in last week’s comments. It’s the stamp that George Granville Leveson-Gower, the 1st Duke of Sutherland (1758-1833) used in…

Folger Tooltips: Researching Bindings
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Folger Tooltips: Researching Bindings

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Author
Jim Kuhn

Man in the moon stamp, STC 20938 Last month Folger Librarian Stephen Enniss announced our public launch of the Folger Bindings Image Collection. Today we introduce Collation readers to the database and describe in a bit more detail some of…

"What manner o' thing is your crocodile?": July edition
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"What manner o' thing is your crocodile?": July edition

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Author
The Collation

Okay, folks, it’s time for another crocodile mystery. It’s pretty obvious, I think, what genre of thing this is (though do go ahead and identify it anyway), so let’s take this to the next level: what specifics can you supply…

Learning to "read" old paper
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Learning to "read" old paper

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Author
Erin Blake

Have you ever wished there were a summer camp for bookish grown-ups? A retreat where we can spend a week amongst our own and not worry about being teased for loving libraries or getting hit in the glasses by a…

Bell's nightmare continued
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Bell's nightmare continued

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Author
Carrie Smith

This post is a continuation of “John Bell, bibliographic nightmare.” I began to write these posts while entrenched in the difficult task of cataloging the library’s myriad copies of Bell’s 18th-century Shakespeare publications as a means of sharing a look into…

Pew-hopping in St. Margaret's Church
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Pew-hopping in St. Margaret's Church

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Author
Heather Wolfe Kathleen Lynch

Manuscripts of unusual shapes and sizes are always fun to investigate, and we recently had the opportunity to reevaluate a particularly large and interesting one, a ca. 1600 “pew plan” written on a piece of parchment (Folger MS X.d.395), in…

Binding clasps
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Binding clasps

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Author
Sarah Werner

Some close observation and deductive reasoning led commenters in the right direction in solving the June crocodile mystery. Here’s image that I posted last week, with a bit more context: With that bit of the surrounding context, it’s much clearer…

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