In 2008, the Clark Library purchased both the library and archive of the Savage-Armstrong family of County Antrim, Northern Ireland, a collection that contains a wide variety of material collected and produced by George Francis Savage-Armstrong (1845-1906), his children and other various family members. George’s brother, Edmund John Armstrong, was a promising poet before his…

The Clark collections hold a number of manuscript cookbooks, most of them compiled in the 17th and 18th centuries.  The item of the week this week, though, is a much more recent work, written around 1915 by Harriet Burlingame Mink (1879-1967). A part of our Montana Collection, the cookbook was donated by UCLA archivist and…

A new finding aid for a small Frederic Goudy collection is now available via the OAC.  The Clark’s Frederic W. Goudy Collection includes materials related to and honoring the career this prolific typeface designer.  Goudy created over 120 type styles including University of California Old Style, exclusively for use by the University of California Press,…

The keepsake below is one of many printed for members of the Zamorano and Roxburghe Clubs — two Californian clubs of bibliophiles who hold joint biennial meetings alternating between Northern and Southern California.  Individuals well known to UCLA and the printing community have been and continue to be members, including Ward Ritchie, Lawrence Clark Powell,…

Russell Maret is a New York letterpress printer who trained in California before setting up his own business. His recent books have been extraordinary, but his newest one, Aethelwold, Etc. (2009) goes beyond extraordinary to magnificent. At heart an alphabet book, it is gorgeously swamped in color and highly imaginative renderings of the 26 letters,…

Though the Clark Library has a decent number of music manuscripts and other works, William Andrews Clark, Jr.’s lifelong interest in music is perhaps best reflected by his founding of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  The Phil was founded in 1919 and soon replaced the Los Angeles Symphony (which Clark did not like) as the city’s…

An exhibition of highlights from the Paul Chrzanowski Collection will be on view at the Clark Library from January through April of 2010 (more anon). In the meantime, as a tease, we’d like to bring your attention to an item of interest, Edward Topsell’s Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes, published in London in 1607 by William…

From time to time, we’d like to highlight items in our collection that we think deserve some notice.  This week, it’s a manuscript acquired by the Clark in 1951 for the impressively small sum of US$13.60. MS.1951.018 is a bound manuscript from 1649, executed in careful calligraphy that imitates a printed book.  It contains the…