For over 20 years, the bookseller David Block and his wife Shiu-min Block assembled a personal collection of bookbindings produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Their choice was guided by the condition of the books and the range of bindings they wished to include in their collection. In 2008, the David and Shiu-min Block Collection of Bookbindings came to the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts as a partial gift, enriching the collections in an area previously not collected systematically by the Department. The collection includes about 250 books. Paper and cloth publishers’ bindings designed in America and in Europe represent the majority of examples but there is also a significant number of unusual bindings in leather, silk, and velvet.
The collection is now fully searchable thanks to the Rare Book Cataloguing Team under Karen Nipps as Head. One may browse the collection searching in HOLLIS or HOLLIS CLASSIC under Title =David and Shiu-min Block Collection of Bookbindings.
[Thanks to Caroline Duroselle-Melish, Assistant Curator of Printing & Graphic Arts, for contributing this post.]
