Pax (nee Patrick) Crowley (they/them, þ/þs)

Tasty signature.

From Parkinson’s Theatrum Botanicum (London, 1640). @theulspeccoll.bsky.social Syn.3.64.6.

My photo shows a ‘roaring’ hippo statuette made of Egyptian blue faience, a ceramic material made of ground quartz. The hippo is seated with head at left, and turned to front. The hippo’s original tusks (top incisors and lower canine teeth are known as tusks), are missing, so it looks as if the hippo is smiling. The blue body is decorated in black with Nile river plants such as water weed and lotus flowers. This decoration depicts the hippo’s marsh habitat as well as having layers of symbolism associated with regeneration e.g. lotus flowers open with the sun in the morning and close at night symbolising rebirth. Height 7.5 cm, length 12.5 cm. On display Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.

A little blue hippo made by an Egyptian artisan around 4,000 years ago! 🦛 ❤️

Decorated with river plants and lotus flowers, blue faience hippos are associated with the life-giving Nile and rebirth. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. 📷 by me

#Archaeology

OMG, their Tam'o'Skriffle... 😭

Title page of 'Epitome Fabii Quintiliani nuper summo & ingenio & diligentia collecta' (Paris, Simon de Colines, 1536)

Drawing of a rabbit

Our intern Audrey found this lovely drawing left by a past reader. They traced one of the bunnies from the title page onto the other side. The rabbits were part of the device or emblem of 16th century Parisian printer Simon de Colines.

On this panel from the House of the Thiasus, a torch-bearing silenus (left), an elderly teacher of Dionysus, leads a woman to her initiation into the god’s rites. Above them is a vignette depicting fish, moray eels, and a torpedo ray. - Archaeological Park of Pompeii

"Second Thoughts On an Orgy": I'm really just fascinated by this new-ish lady from the House of the Thiasus. (Thank you Molly Swetnam-Burland for all the commentary!) With some bonus eels for the marine biologists & @greenleejw.bsky.social! archaeology.org/issues/march...

A diagram of the evolution of whales, from land dwelling mammals to the ocean giants we know today.

Whale evolution makes me uncomfortable

Dirb an interdimentional treaure.

Love this!

Carolingian Biodiversity How Interdisciplinary Can and Should Work

Wow! @lollardfish.bsky.social & @profgabriele.com going all in on a new study using pollen to document biodiversity at & around the Abbey of St Gall in the Carolingian Age. buttondown.com/ModernMediev... #MedievalSky #interdisciplinarity

an open book with a hand-drawn bookplate on the right side. the top of the plate has "A. Helen Page" written in tentative cursive. below that is a child's drawing of a girl with wavy hair and a triangle skirt. at the bottom, in tentative print "HER BOOK 1899"

relaxed saturday evening reading through "women designers of book plates (1902)" and flipped past a couple of beautiful professional designs only to see this perfect plate by a young Miss Page

FINAL CALL! ⏰

One week left to apply for our Nottebohm Fellowship!

☟ ☟ ☟

I finally set my workstation background. It files like I am properly moved in. Also, I do not think I will ever be able to work without 2 screens again. This is the best thing ever!

Stop in random libraries

A white and brown bunny nibbles a carrot from a miniature shopping cart filled with carrots.

Our medieval curator Alison Ray introduces Rawlinson Bodleian Library MS. Rawl. D. 252...a 15th Century necromancer's journal.

This manuscript contains spells written in Latin and Middle English, and would have served as a reference for a professional sorcerer.

#MedievalMonday

Spotted in the stacks as I was shelving my stack of newly cataloged books. Love the headpiece and its appropriateness for the Argonautica.

#rarebooks #specialcollections #apollonios #earlyprinting

a drawing of some pumpkin people dressed as adventurers, a barbarian with an axe, a wizard with a staff, a knight with sword and shield and a rogue with a dagger. There is a pumpkin with bat wings flying in the sky and a moon

Pumpkin adventurers

UT Austin’s Harry Ransom Center Provides Funded Fellowships in the Arts and Humanities The humanities library and museum will award up to 50 fellowships to support scholars, artists, and writers conducting on-site archival research.

Many thanks to our friends @hyperallergic.com for spreading the word about @ransomcenter.bsky.social's 2026-27 #fellowships!

Learn more by visiting the Center's website: www.hrc.utexas.edu/fellowships/

#Humanities #Photography #Literature #ArtHistory #RareBooks #Theatre #FilmHistory 🗃️📜📚

I forgot to link: onesearch.wesleyan.edu/permalink/01...

So it's a bit too tight to really get in there and see it. But it also means that one could also solve this by assuming a conjugate flyleaf that didn't survive the rebind. But that in itself seems like an unlikely (and untidy) way to sign anyway. Anyway, good enough for now. On to other pastures.

that the fifth leaf is an unsigned singleton--a presumed chi. This seems most likely to me. The weirdness is that the catchword on [paragraph]4v correctly predicts the heading of this posited chi1r, which seems kind of odd for an insertion. It is in a modern binding. [3/4]

And it's got a funny little mystery with its first leaves too. It's a quarto, but the initial gathering is 5 leaves. I can't quite tell if there's a singleton in there or if there's an excised leaf. The title page is unsigned, but the next leaf is signed [paragraph]2. So that might mean... [2/4]

Finishing up cataloging this lovely 1676 book of Ecuadorian poetry and prose that contains accounts of hyperlocal fetivals with syncretic religious practices (Indegineous and Catholic). But what's enchanting my at the moment are the darling collections of typographic ornament! #rarebooks #typography

Page from a cookery book, describing various ways to make pancakes.

Happy Pancake Day!

This pancake recipe is from 'The Cook's and Confectioner's Dictionary' (1723) by John Nott, the oldest cookery book in our collections.

"...it will make them crisp, look yellow as Gold, and eat very well."

📷 Reserve 640.4 NOT

#PancakeDay #ShroveTuesday #RareBooks

Five lines of text on a orange-yellow gradient background. The text reads, “Identity, expression, full queer, visibility, experience” in a plain sans serif typeface, with some letters replaced with expressive calligraphic forms.

A photo of a woman with letters overlaid on top: “Intro to Modern Type Design / IMTD"

Fer Cozzi, Audaz (custom typeface for Nike), 2023.

Learn type design with Fer Cozzi, online! Create your own font, from sketch to screen (and everything in between).

10 weekly sessions, 3 hours each: Feb 26 – Apr 30, 2025
letterformarchive.org/shop/introdu...

#TypeDesign #Fonts #FontDesign

Some of Hartford’s long and important black history:

www.hartfordheritage.org/black-heritage

A couple of great owl decorations and some lovely initials in an otherwise pretty unremarkable edition 1901 edition of Bacon’s Essays. I love how well designed even mass market books could be at the turn of the last century. #rarebooks #owls #SCSUSpecialCollections #specialcollections

Two columns of music are on the page. Each column has 6 parts. The top five parts are staves of 5 lines. The last part has a stave of 6 lines. The musical notes have been drawn as black squares with tails. Red or Blue capital letters are given for names. The lines are in red.

If you like music, you might enjoy seeing this image. It is from a service book c.1300 (WCL Q107 folio 17v).

A page of paper with a white line image of a snake wrapped round a staff.

Happy Lunar New Year!

What do you get if you cross #WatermarkWednesday with the year of the snake? A jolly snake watermark, of course!

We found this happy chap on the endpapers of a 'Sacerdotale sive sacerdotum thesaurus' which was printed in 1592.

📖 F 26/103