Featherstone Vaults

Collection

Rare Books & Manuscripts

Early printed books, manuscripts, maps, letters and documents.

Illuminated manuscript opening in blue, gold and red, Herat, 1431–32.
Representative collection image · The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain

How we catalogue it

Collation is checked against standard bibliographies and reported in full. Made-up copies, supplied leaves, rebinding and washing are disclosed. A plainly described imperfect copy is preferable to a quietly perfected one.

Manuscripts · First editions · Maps

Currently catalogued02

Where an entry has not yet been photographed its plate is shown blank. Featherstone Vaults photography replaces them entry by entry; no stand-in imagery is used.

Buying in this department

What we look for

Copies are collated against the standard bibliographies and the collation is reported in full, including what is wrong with it. A plainly described imperfect copy is a better object than a quietly perfected one, and a made-up copy sold as complete is the single most common problem in this field.

Supplied leaves, facsimile leaves, washing, pressing, re-margining and rebinding are all disclosed. Where a binding is not contemporary with the text we say when we think it was made.

Condition and the record

Provenance in books is often better evidenced than in any other department, because it is written on the object: ownership inscriptions, armorial bookplates, shelf marks, booksellers' tickets and auction annotations. We record these and photograph them, and we resist the practice of removing them to improve appearance.

Maps and separately issued plates are described with their sheet dimensions, platemark and any trimming, and we state whether colour is original or later.

Worth asking

Is the copy complete against the standard collation. What has been supplied, and from where. Has it been washed, pressed or re-margined. Is the binding contemporary. Is the colour original.

Further reading