"A familiar face around the southeastern US book fair circuit, David A. Hamilton is Rare Book Cafe’s August 13 guest," began Rare Book Cafe's promo in late summer, 2015.
The night of August 12, 2015, co-host Lindsay Thompson signed in to Blab.im, the videoconferencing site the show'd been using, and, gasped.
It was gone. Shut down. The site- which had gained notoriety as the home of all-night mologues by "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli while still in beta- was closed by its developers. They posted a cryptic note about pursuing other things.
So we had to cancel one of our two January 20, 2018 guests, David Hamilton.
But now, after 29 months, David Hamilton will make his Cafe visit at last!
Not only will we talk with Hamilton about his ABAA/IOBA member bookstore, Americana Books in Stone Mountain, GA, we’ll learn more about the Georgia Antiquarian Booksellers Association, whose annual Georgia Book and Paper Fair is slated for September 3-4, 2016 in Decatur. Hamilton is the Association’s treasurer.
Open since 1993, Hamilton’s business focuses on “books and printed materials that are focused on our country's rich and historic culture including unique narratives, regional histories, reminiscences, obscure imprints, books with provenance and associations, journals, ledgers, diaries, manuscripts, photograph albums, and ephemera.”
“Our history is full of dramatic stories of rise and fall, heroism, tragedy, conflict, scandal, oppression, struggle, victory and inspiration. Recorded narratives of pioneer travellers, civil war soldier’s battle reminiscences, or civil rights struggles opens a window into the past to see how people lived, survived, where they came from, what they experienced and so on. The past is chronicled in a wide assortment of books and ephemera. Reading about our shared history stimulates our imagination and grabs our attention. Compared to the rest of the World, American History is fresh and evolving. Our culture is very diverse and constantly changing. These trends provides us with plenty of new stories and information. We hope our customers will share our passion for the personal, historical and descriptive stories that have been written and preserve them for future generations to read and enjoy,” Hamilton explains.
The store is located in the historic Stone Mountain Village near Atlanta.
Richard Mori (right) at the 2014 Florida Antiquarian Book Fair, with comedian Meredith Meyers, the Standup Librarian.
Also joining us Saturday is another guest who got away. Richard Mori was set to joining the Cafe from the fabulous St Petersburg Coliseum January 13, while he was there for a collectibles show.
But came the afternoon, and didn't come the Mori. He had the best of all problems: he was so busy selling things he brought to St Petersburg, he couldn't take a break. But he, too, wanted to join us, and so cleared time for this coming weekend.
Richard Mori is a local dealer of antiquarian or used books and has been buying and selling for over 25 years. His passion is selling, buying, appraising and enjoying rare and antiquarian books. He spends time traveling around the country attending book and antique shows.
After scouting Franklin for some storage space for his book collection, he and a friend opened Franklin Falls Book and Art Store on July 1, 2017. The store carries used and collectible books, over 5,000 postcards and even a historic piece on the City of Franklin from 1895 that’s in pristine condition.
Mori’s expertise ranges from the author Tasha Tudor to Boy and Girl Scouts books and ephemera (here’s an audio interview about that) to children’s books. A Denver Post reporter profiled him on a visit to the Mile High City:
Collectors first started to take notice of children's books in the 1930s, but the genre began to hit its collectible stride in the 1980s as boomers reached an age where they were stricken by nostalgia for childhood.
Their old children's books became a way to recapture that time, said Richard Mori, a New Hampshire book dealer. Mori will be on a panel that will discuss collecting children's books at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Rocky Mountain Antiquarian Book Fair…
Mori said children's books are the babies of literature, with very few published before the 1870s and 1880s.
"To put it into perspective: They have been publishing books for 500 years, but it is really in the last 200 years that they have actually printed anything oriented to children and, in truth, it is only in the last 100 years or so that children's books have had a very defined market,'' he said.
The birth of children's literature resulted from societal changes spurred by the Industrial Revolution, technological advances in printing after the Civil War, especially chromolithography, and the emergence in England of a group of talented artists trained to illustrate books, Mori said.
The artists were a key ingredient in the new popularity of kids' books. Among them were Howard Pyle, Kate Greenaway, Jessie Wilcox and Walter Crane.
Then in the 1930s Joseph Blanck published "Peter Parley to Penrod,'' which was a guide to the best-loved American juvenile books.
Library, schools and other institutions built children's collection using Blanck's book. Its list of some 100 books included "Captain January'' by Laura Richards, Pyle's "Otto of the Silver Hand,'' "Little Lord Fauntleroy'' by Frances Burnett and "Peterkin Papers'' by Lucretia Hale.
"That was probably the seed that started in earnest the collecting of children's books,'' Mori said.
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Rare Book Cafe is streamed by the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair every Saturday from 2.30 to 3.30 pm EDT. We feature interviews, panel discussion and stuff you can learn about book collecting whether you are a regular at Sotheby’s or just someone who likes books.
The program airs live on Rare Book Cafe’s Facebook page, and remain there after the show.
The program’s regular guests include Miami book dealer, appraiser and WDBFRadio.com’s Bucks on the Bookshelf radio show creator Steven Eisenstein, Thorne Donnelley of Liberty Book Store in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida; Lindsay Thompson of Charlotte’s Henry Bemis Books; miniature books expert Edie Eisenstein; and program creator/producer T. Allan Smith.
We enjoy the support and encouragement of these booksellers:A Bric-A-Brac in Miami; Little Sages Books in Hollywood, Florida; Liberty Books in Palm Beach Gardens; As Time Goes By, in Marion, Alabama; Quill & Brush in Dickerson, Maryland; Lighthouse Books in St. Petersburg; The Ridge Books in Calhoun, Georgia; A-Bric-A-Brac in Miami Beach; and Henry Bemis Books in Charlotte.
Rare Book Cafe program encourages viewer participation via its interactive features and video: if you've got an interesting book, join the panel and show it to us! If you’d like to ask the team a question or join us in the virtual live studio audience for the program, write us at rarebookcafe@gmail.com.
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