Things I Like #8

Once again, in a post inspired by, or stolen from, Mistress Maddie, here are some things I like that are around the house.

This is my favorite corner of the living room because it’s Carlos and me, and some friends, and some trips and some things my father gave me. The desk is Carlos’, brought from the family home in Mexico. It’s a small roll-top desk with little drawers and compartments and a desktop that pulls out for writing.

Above the desk is a photograph I bought at a winery in California many, many years ago. It’s a simple black-and-white photo of a window, with a shade drawn down and bent, stopping just short of the windowsill lined with broken glass. It seems so desolate and peaceful and as soon as I saw I, it was in my hands. 

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it … oh, sorry. This accent light was a gift to me from some friends; I like that it looks like a flower and has a frog sitting on the handle. It’s whimsical, you know.

And finally, a gift from my Father. The Little Leather Library Collection that has been in my family’s homes for as long as I can remember. My parents bought the set when they lived in England after getting married, so they are older than me, Each book measures 3x4 inches and there are all sorts of stories; Shakespeare plays; essays on Lincoln; Poe poems; and these two …Uses of Great Men and As A Man Thinketh.

The Little Leather Library Corporation was conceived of by publisher brothers Charles and Albert Boni in about 1914. In 1916 they showed their prototype to ad men Harry Scherman and Maxwell Sackheim, who worked at J. Walter Thompson Company. Scherman suggested approaching the Whitman’s Candy Company of Philadelphia and proposed the “Library Package”, a box that would include a copy of a literary classic enclosed with Whitman's chocolates. Whitman’s Co. ordered a total of 15,000 copies of fifteen of Shakespeare's plays.

After the Whitman’s order came additional titles, sold by Woolworth's for ten cents each. In 1917, it is estimated Woolworth's ordered over 1 million copies of The Little Leather Library. That was when the collections began to be sold as a set, with twenty to thirty books in each set. In the first year, sixty titles were published, and one million were sold in a little over a year.

I have read some of them, and some I feel are a bit too delicate to open, but loving books as I do, I get a kick out of a ‘little’ collection.

And there you have a small corner of Casa Bob y Carlos.