https://www.bibliopathos.it/en/blog/ Essays and discoveries from Bibliopathos, antiquarian booksellers: rare books and manuscripts, playing cards and tarot, pre-cinema optical devices. en https://www.bibliopathos.it/en/blog/the-jack-who-worked-for-the-tax-office/ https://www.bibliopathos.it/en/blog/the-jack-who-worked-for-the-tax-office/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Picture a card-maker in a French provincial town, some time in the eighteenth century. He has paper, brushes and paint in his workshop, but he cannot simply print a deck of cards. The woodblocks that carry the faces of… https://www.bibliopathos.it/en/blog/the-plates-that-missed-their-century/ https://www.bibliopathos.it/en/blog/the-plates-that-missed-their-century/ Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT In 1552, in Rome, a set of forty-seven copper plates was engraved. They mapped the human body with a care no one had matched: the kidneys, the great vessels, the small bones of the ear, the nerves branching like river… https://www.bibliopathos.it/en/blog/the-image-that-learned-to-move/ https://www.bibliopathos.it/en/blog/the-image-that-learned-to-move/ Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT A sheet of paper lies on the table, coloured red, yellow, turquoise and black, and it makes no sense: two figures stretched along an arc into a smear, bent around a blank circle. Stand a polished metal cylinder on that… https://www.bibliopathos.it/en/blog/a-drawing-cut-to-pieces/ https://www.bibliopathos.it/en/blog/a-drawing-cut-to-pieces/ Sat, 04 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Picture an engraver who has just finished a perspective scene, a complete little world incised on copper. He prints it, colors it by hand, and then takes a blade to it. He cuts the sky away from behind the figures on… https://www.bibliopathos.it/en/blog/the-bible-that-kept-its-own-promise/ https://www.bibliopathos.it/en/blog/the-bible-that-kept-its-own-promise/ Fri, 03 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT In 1530, a title page made a proud announcement to Italian readers: here was the Bible in their own language, translated from the original Hebrew and Greek. It was the claim of a new age, confident, philological, almost… https://www.bibliopathos.it/en/blog/the-bavarian-who-taught-milan-to-play-cards/ https://www.bibliopathos.it/en/blog/the-bavarian-who-taught-milan-to-play-cards/ Fri, 03 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Picture Milan in 1814. Napoleon has fallen, the Austrians are back, and the returning administration is winding up the leftovers of the French regime, including a state-owned playing card factory that had never quite… https://www.bibliopathos.it/en/blog/how-to-make-night-fall-in-your-hand/ https://www.bibliopathos.it/en/blog/how-to-make-night-fall-in-your-hand/ Thu, 02 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Hold a small black cone to your eye and look. A cathedral opens in front of you, seen in daylight: pale stone, a quiet nave, the ordinary colours of an afternoon. Now a hidden shutter closes over the front of the…