Happy World Book Day! Not too hard to pick which shelf is mine...

When you need to retrieve all 13 volumes from four locations in order to catalogue just one 😂

Having a bad day, walking grumpily from back-of-house to another back-of-house...then this view. Maybe things aren't so bad.

At left, a hand-coloured manuscript chart detailing the stratigraphy of British geology. At right, two copies of the published work, one bound in red and the other in blue.

A handwritten note on the front endless of a bound book. The note reads "When re-binding these charts need re-arranging in correct order."

On my desk today: unravelling the print records from the (fully digitised by @nhmlibraryarchives.bsky.social ) artwork of Henry Woodward's Table of British Strata. I particularly enjoyed the sarky note to future bookbinders! 🤣

We've put together a 25-day #NHMAdventCalendar of Library and Archives art. Enjoy! 4. Octopus, Port Jackson Painter (active 1790s). Did you know… #AdventCalendar2025 #Christmas #SpecialCollections #Art #NaturalHistoryMuseum
Alt text: an advent calendar revealing a white octopus from below.

I had a lot of fun doing this, so won't be shy about reposting!

Dunk, turn, dunk, turn, dunk…If you're doing one textblock, why not do eight? G.A. Olivier's Entomologie (Paris 1789-1808). #MarbledMonday #MarbledPaper #SpecialCollections #BlueSkyBooks

A lovely thing to end the week on: Thomas Martyn's Aranei : or a natural history of Spiders (London, 1793). Bound by Christian Samuel Kalthhoeber? Perhaps. A striking frontispiece? Definitely.

One of the more interesting bindings to pass across my desk recently. #bookbinding #specialcollections #naturalhistorymuseum #blueskybooks #rarebooks

An open antique book photographed from one end. The marbled edge of the book is held by an endband of alternating blue and white.

Three photographs of a 15th century book. Top lett, the closed book showing a brown leather spine and marbled paper. Top right, an open page with blue painted U. Bottom, the book edge, with "Ruralia" inked on the edge.

Four coloured book spines titled "Siberia in Asia" and "Siberia in Europe". Spines left to right are brown, orange, tan, blue.

A closely cropped image of three stacked books. The lower two have marbled edges of blue, yellow, pink, and white.

The things I couldn't walk past this week, including a trip over the road to the V&A. #bookbinding #Incunabula #Endbands #marbling #VictoriaAndAlbertMuseum #RareBooks #shelfie

Two photos of a 5-volume set of books on a shelf. Each image shows 19th century marbling on volumes now in 20th century bindings.

A wooden library shelf holding 15 small notebooks bound in brown leather.

A split image showing a black and cream swirling pattern at left, and a black and white crocodile-skin pattern at right. Both are book covers.

A recurring design of purple lines and green leaves on a cloth background, in an Art Nouveau style.

This week's encounters of the bookish kind. #SpecialCollections #NaturalHistoryMuseum #Bookbindings #MarbledDesigns #Endpapers #BlueSkyBooks #Shelfie

What distracted me this week at work. #SpecialCollections #Bookbinding #Endpapers #NaturalHistoryMuseum #tickets #Bookplates #BlueSkyBooks

One day, I'll be able to walk through the stacks without getting distracted. One day. #bookbinding #tradebindings

So many lovely books in @nhmlibraryarchives.bsky.social‬, so little time to spend with each... #Cataloguing #RareBooks #Provenance #Endpapers

Thanks :-) No, no HD version -- some stripes are pretty low resolution as they're just a tiny sliver of a painting. But we'll work on it!

Gloves (regardless of colour or material) affect your sense of touch, making it more likely to tear a page, whereas surgical-type gloves work protect shiny things like copperplates and photographs from fingerprints.

Made from 100% endpapers and artworks from @nhmlibraryarchives.bsky.social collections.

A hand holding two books on fungi with covers of decorative paper. Title at left is 'Edible Fungi', at right is 'Poisonous Fungi'.

Beautiful AND informative. That's how we like 'em here @nhmlibraryarchives.bsky.social (London: Penguin, 1943 & 1945) #Bookbindings #Fungi #NaturalHistoryMuseum

I suspect that, when making this, my enthusiasm for #bookbinding and #bookbindings triumphed over snappy post length...

Cataloguing ‪@nhmlibraryarchives.bsky.social‬ collections brings all sorts of surprises -- I settled for "Two boxes of glass microscopic slides as reproduced in serial 'Studies in microscopical science' (1882-1887)". No eye of newt, but close! #cataloguing #SpecialCollections #NaturalHistoryMuseum