1 / 10
tabulae-anatomicae
There are places where open flames are particularly frowned upon. A textile mill or a stationery store, for instance. And then there are places where the mere mention of a flame, fire, spark, smoke or ember elicits pandemonium. The San Francisco Antiquarian Book, Print and Paper Fair, held earlier this month, would be such a place. In a building stretching one square block sat some of the rarest texts, maps and manuscripts in the world, precariously flammable, and indubitably expensive.
Particularly fetching among these cultural treasures were the scientific tomes — works of biology, astronomy, chemistry and the like — which dealers proudly displayed with the most enticing illustration forward. It’s the intellectual equivalent of the models on the car lot with their hoods popped open, only with more flammability and much more intellect. From Audubon’s The Birds of America, a first edition of which sold last month at auction for $7.9 million, to Copernicus’ heliocentric sketch that changed the world, we’ve selected the most remarkable works the fair had to offer.
Above:
Owner: By the Book, Phoenix, AZ
Photos: Brian L. Frank/Wired.com
Tabulae Anatomicae (1728)
by Bartolomeo Eustachi Bartolomeo Eustachi, after whom the ear's Eustachian tube is named, drew the illustrations and compiled the corresponding notes in this work of human anatomy, only for the book to be lost in the Vatican library for 150 years. Upon its publication with only eight of Eustachius' original notes, the text was understandably dated, though no less remarkable in its beauty.
Owner: By the Book, Phoenix, AZ
Photos: Brian L. Frank/Wired.com
