Move over Hay-on-Wye, go to Monte Carlo!
July 8, 2011
Regular readers of this column will know that wherever I travel I cannot resist paying a visit to an old bookshop.
I am just back from visiting an old friend in Monaco, not the kind of place perhaps you would associate with dingy rooms piled high with dusty tomes. And you’d be right; the ILAB website records only one solitary member trading in the ostentatious tax haven.
The delightful lady proprietor (proprietress?) in question welcomed me to her admittedly smarter-than-average premises, confirming that she had no competitor in the tiny principality. Always interesting to peruse a bookseller’s stock and gain a feel for the local market (and what a potential market!), but this was never a shop likely to yield a bargain.
So that afternoon I turned my antiquarian eye to a Riviera town just along the coast, which was Nice.
Nice as you might expect boasts a rather more thriving scene for the bibliophile and lover of old paper. At my first port of call, the reassuringly-fusty Librairie de l’Escurial close to the central train station, the very pleasant “patron” produced a guide listing several booksellers. For the record, he crossed off several addresses immediately – recent closures, an all too familiar story for our trade, anywhere in the world.
I was able to visit a few, and soon discovered that anything which caught my eye commanded a premium so punchy as to be well out of my range, even allowing for a trade discount. Wherever I go in the Eurozone I seem to come up against prohibitive pricing, and the current exchange rate further weakens British buying power.
So I made only one modest purchase in the end, back at l’Escurial. It is an obscure bibliography of monographs on printmakers, published in Belgium in 1918.
The little book may in some small measure enhance my pool of knowledge, but will it be of any practicable use, much less be resalable at a profit? I have my doubts on both counts, but have found myself developing a strange preoccupation – obsession almost – with reference books. I am sure this is a phenomenon other dealers will recognise.
It’s not as if I regularly consult all of these books on prints that multiply at an alarming rate on my shelves. I just like having them around.
Go figure.
