28.9.11

Booksellers Flourish

Been a while since there's been a headline like that, so we're taking the opportunity. Two bits of retail news...


Collinge & Clark of London has (finally) got a Web site up and running, featuring both items from its extensive inventory (fine press, book arts & the like) and the opportunity for the sometimes withering, always entertaining comments from Oliver Clark. (Those of you who've seen the store front may recognize it from the exterior shots of Black Books, a show that never fully mined the potential for absurd humor in the world of book collecting).


Meanwhile, a third of the world away in Los Angeles, Jesse Rossa has opened the doors of Triolet Rare Books, specializing in primarily 20th century literature but promising also a focus on photo books, contemporary art, "and other areas of interest" (which probably means anything cool that comes his way). The site includes a blog that promises to feature interesting finds and generally interesting items. Swimming against the constant tide of obituaries for the book, Rossa writes that "I would like to think that no matter how much of a niche it becomes (and those who value the book as an object have always been, as Leonard Baskin said, 'the tiniest lunatic fringe in the nation'), there will always be those who want to own a beautiful book, whether for its typographic qualities, the binding and paper, a signature or inscription, the illustrations, or just for its sheer physicality."