photos and stories from the Powerhouse Museum
Today is World Book and Copyright Day. By celebrating this day throughout the world, UNESCO seeks to promote reading, publishing and the protection of intellectual property through copyright. To read more about World Book and Copyright Day, see the UNESCO website.
As well as being repositories of knowledge, information and stories, books can also be significant as physical objects. The books in the photographs above date back to the 19th century. They were used in the early days of the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences (now the Powerhouse Museum) to record the acquisition of objects into the Museum’s collection. The information contained within them has long been transferred to electronic form but they remain interesting for many reasons, including as evidence of museology practice, styles of bookbinding and examples of the fast disappearing art of handwriting contained within them. The marbling used to decorate the edges of the pages makes for a beautiful photograph too!
Photography by Sue Stafford
© All rights reserved