A Balloon Ascension at Midnight

9 July 2010

It would taken the pen of a Carlyle to describe our mysterious flight over Paris at midnight. The impression was so startling that for an hour we never spoke above a whisper.
George Eli Hall’s story A Balloon Ascension at Midnight is one of my favorite publications from the Elder & Shepard years. [...]

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Christmas Carol Series

5 July 2010

In 1902 Elder and Shepard published a series of six Christmas carols, on single sheets with particularly beautiful printing. The artwork is by Harold M. Sichel (1881-1948), who was one of Elder’s favorite art contributors over the next decade.

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The Menehunes

25 June 2010

The Menehunes, Their Adventures With the Fisherman and How They Built the Canoe, by Emily Foster Day, 1905. This small volume was bound in Hawaiian kapa fabric. The following year, Day wrote another book of Hawaiiana for Paul Elder, The Princess of Manoa. Emily was married to Francis Root Day, a prominent doctor. In 1887 [...]

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Mosaic Essays

20 June 2010

Beginning in 1901, Paul Elder compiled and published a series of booklets of aphorisms, each with a separate theme. The five booklets were Friendship, Love, Happiness, Nature and Success. They apparently were fairly successful, because in 1906 Elder republished the five texts as a single volume entitled Mosaic Essays. The cover and title page [...]

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Calendar 1907

11 June 2010

Today Paul Elder is known primarily for his books, but he also produced a large amount of ephemera. Here is a page from a 1907 calendar. The months and days are almost an afterthought, taking a backseat to the illustrations and quote from Robert Louis Stevenson.

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Wayfarers in Italy

4 June 2010

Katharine Hooker’s Wayfarers in Italy is perhaps the finest book issued by Elder & Shepard during their five-year collaboration (1898-1903). It was privately printed in 1901 at the Stanley-Taylor Company on hand-made Ruisdael paper, in limited editions of 100 and 300 copies. The title page decorations and illuminated chapter headings were probably designed by Morgan [...]

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Do any furnishings from Elder’s bookstores still exist?

12 March 2010

Bernard Maybeck designed beautiful medieval-style chandeliers for the 1906 store on Van Ness. Those fixtures were moved to 239 Grant in 1909, and later to 239 Post in 1921. Maybeck also designed Gothic-inspired window screens for 239 Grant (you can see some of them at the top of the stairwell); those pieces were moved to [...]

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Welcome to the new paulelder.org

28 February 2010

Today I am launching the newly-redesigned paulelder.org. I have added several new features, including a blog, biographies of notable people and frequently asked questions. Please let me know what you think!

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Do any of Elder’s bookstores still exist?

29 January 2010

No. However, at least one, and perhaps as many as four buildings that once housed Elder’s stores still exist. Here are the details:

Mills Building, northeast corner of Bush & Montgomery, San Francisco. Elder’s shop was a room on the mezzanine. The building was burned out in the 1906 earthquake and fire, but the shell was [...]

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What is a tomoyé?

29 January 2010

The Japanese word tomoe (巴) refers to a comma-shaped symbol. There are hundreds of traditional Japanese tomoe designs. The most common variant is the three-tomoe design called mitsudomoe (三つ巴), which, according to Japanese tradition, creates the harmony of a perfect circle. Here are some examples of tomoe, taken from the book Japanese Design Motifs, [...]

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