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“Anarchy in the archives”
à Zurich — Se vend où l’on sait — MMXXVI
[Missale Romanum.] Venice: Turrini, 1651. Folio, contemporary calf, much worn.
A parish missal from an Alpine village, hiding nine leaves of a 1485 incunable inside — including the rubricated initial that became the mark of this show.
The lots are described honestly; the prices were absurd.
Vesalius, Andreas. Epitome (German). Folio, Basel: Oporinus, 1543.
A CHF 70 find from a closing bookshop, now consigned to Christie’s at £20,000–25,000. The 31st known copy in the world.
▶ 47 min · Listen[Anon. — abbé Jean Roy?] Adoulzin. 12mo, “à Paris,” 1787.
An anonymous novel nobody has read in two centuries, and the trail that may lead to the Petit Trianon.
▶ 41 min · ListenBaroja, Pío. Camino de Perfección. Madrid, 1902.
A first edition inscribed by the author to the real man behind one of its characters.
▶ 38 min · ListenZenker, Wilhelm. Lehrbuch der Photochromie. 8vo, Berlin: for the author, 1868.
The first colour photograph ever issued in a printed book — found for CHF 150 in a Zürich thrift shop. How a forgotten physicist beat Lippmann to the Nobel-winning idea by forty years.
▶ 43 min · ListenEvery archive is quietly falling apart, and every falling-apart archive leaks treasure. Anarchival is a podcast about what leaks out: the books that survived censors, fires, and church sales to end up in a Swiss thrift shop priced at three francs. We buy them. Then we find out what they are.
Occasional dispatches. No. 1 forthcoming.
☞ Entered in the ledger. No. 1 forthcoming.
