* Whether you are a start up enterprise or a fully fledged business the National Library of Scotland has what you need to get to the next level. From conception to execution, let me guide you through some of the business material available. An integral part of the National Library that I believe entrepreneurs and […]
Tag: illustration
Fashion Collections at the NLS
Vogue The Covers HB6.218.6.89, 100 Years of Fashion PB6.212.838/10, Behind The Runway HB6.217.2.36 The General Collections available at the National Library of Scotland (NLS) cover a diverse range of topics from Mountaineering to Music. You can find help and information to set up a business, indulge a passion, learn a new skill or delve into […]
Magazines at the National Library of Scotland
As you would expect the National Library of Scotland has academic journals on all disciplines and also Scottish magazines and serial publications ranging from influential 19th century literary journals such as “Blackwood’s Edinburgh magazine” to modern titles such as D C Thomson’s recently launched “Danger mouse” comic and the new Scottish football journal “Nutmeg”. What […]
Yes we have colouring books in the library but sorry you can’t colour them in
As well as being a repository of knowledge the National Library of Scotland is an archive of publishing trends and fashions. You might remember the Magic Eye books of the mid 1990s? If you squinted at an image in these books in the right way a 3D landscape would open up before your eyes as […]
Four removes from Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson has been on my mind lately for various reasons, not least because we have a cataloguing project currently underway to sort and describe the extensive papers of Ernest Mehew , the outstanding Stevenson expert of his (or any other) day. We were given the archive of Ernest and Joyce Mehew, and Edinburgh Napier University have the […]
By way of illustration
Earlier this year we bought a gorgeous album of sketches and engravings by Joan Hassall. Hassall was a celebrated English wood engraver and illustrator, and the album tells the story of one book, ‘The Collected Poems of Andrew Young’. He was Scottish, and that’s why we bought it. The album includes Hassall’s account of how […]
Bartholomew, Biscuits and the First World War
As the Project that brings you these posts is due to end in March of this year, I wanted to share with you, whilst I can, some of the more unexpected items I have found in the Printing Record from the First World War. Like many of us perhaps, my understanding of this brutal conflict […]
The Automobile Association Map of England and Wales
On the 25th August, 1939, John Bartholomew and Son printed 10,347 copies of their ‘Automobile Association Map of England and Wales’. As far as maps go, I think it’s fair to say it’s not exactly anything to write home about. Stripped away of any extraneous information, beyond the roads themselves, the strictly black and white […]
Isolation in Thought
Upon the commencement of John George Bartholomew’s tenure as director of John Bartholomew & Co. in 1888, there is a marked tendency towards the cartographic. The riotous miscellany which characterised earlier times was replaced by better and better mapping. However, there are always exceptions to this rule, with the subject of this entry being just […]
The Most Popular Atlas Ever Published
You’d be forgiven for thinking that this superlative description was a reference to The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, however, the uncharacteristic hubris used in this advertising actually concerns Bartholomew’s Citizen’s Atlas of the World.