Rare Antique Books

Ferguson of Miller loves rare, old recipe books; oldest dates to 1755

MILLER — Forget postcards or stamps. Judy Ferguson prefers a more unique collection. 

“I think I like collecting cookbooks because it’s different,” said the Miller resident, standing amid her massive collection of cookbooks and kitchen items. “I like rare things, and old things — like me,” she added with a laugh.

Ferguson’s 2,088 cookbooks come from every imaginable genre and generation. Her oldest cookbook is from 1755.

“That’s older than the U.S.,” noted her husband, Robert.

“The recipes look a lot different than what you see in today’s cookbooks. They’re a lot harder to read,” added Judy.

Ferguson said she began collecting cookbooks when she was about 18.

The Connecticut native has lived in several states, but moved to Nebraska in 1997.

Since then, her collection has grown, and she has started collecting antique kitchen items and utensils in addition to cookbooks.

“When people give me stuff, it’s usually cooking related,” Ferguson said.

She has loved to cook since she was 5.

“I made my first cake when I was 5. We didn’t have any granulated sugar, so I used confectioner’s sugar,” she recalled. “It was awful, but my dad made the family eat it and they weren’t allowed to say it was bad.”

She said the experience strengthened her interest in cooking and baking. “You learn by making mistakes.”

Ferguson has enjoyed her position as a cook at Stockman’s Bar and Grill in Amherst for three years. Prior to that, she managed The Village Café in Miller.

She said her favorite things to cook are desserts and breads.

She rarely uses recipes from the cookbooks in her collection because many of them are antiques.

“It’s amazing how people used to cook some of these things,” Ferguson said. “Mostly now, I want to buy cookbooks that are at least 100 years old.

Antiquarian books trade within the Us

Antique book trade in the United States is a side of book collecting and publishing. The term antiquarian , in general, refers to antiquities and collectibles at times considered vintage and rare books, however are not restricted to books. The word antiquarian may additionally be used to describe an individual who collects antique and rare books or other antiques item.

Two key figures who have written a nice deal on the U.S. Antiquarian book trade specifically are Leona Rostenberg (1908–2005) and Madeleine B. Stern (1912–2007), both of whom wtere conjointly in the business of collecting and selling rare books. Alternative histories having lined the subject embrace Isaiah Thomas, writing in 1810 his History of printing in America; Henry Walcott Boynton’s Annals of American Bookselling, 1638-1850, first published in 1932; Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt’s The Book in America: A History of the Making, the Selling, and the Collecting of Books in the United States (1939).

The antiquarian book trade has roots in Colonial America, and could be considered within the study of American history and literature, print culture, and book history. Antiquarian book fairs have long been an vital side of the trade. Today, the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA) is the first organization of the trade within the United States. Alternative organizations embody the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP). The Rare Book School at the University of Virginia is the premier institution for those seeking a complicated education in the field.

HISTORY The beginnings of the antiquarian book trade can be traced to British North America, specifically Boston of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. There isn’t any established date of when this business of book collecting truly begins, however Stern attributes the beginnings to John Dunton’s visit to Boston in 1686, in which he brought along numerous books from his native England. Printed materials and books but were already on the market in Boston, the primary book shop having been opened in 1647 by Hezekiah Usher. The act of collecting and selling books as a kind of business will increase later in seventeenth century, with 1693 being the date of the earliest printed catalogue of books in the American colonies.

Events in Boston throughout the eighteenth century proved both difficult and advantageous for the antiquarian book trade. For example, a fire broke out in 1711 that consumed nearly every bookshop then alive in Boston. In the subsequent 2 decades antiquarian booksellers rebuilt and gradually began to thrive, with the presence of Harvard College, also a sure literary and instructional milieu in Boston permitting the development of the antiquarian book trade.

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ANTIQUE BOOKS

Antique and modern furniture, collection of oil paintings, rare books, plays, stage costumes, etc, the personal property of the late Dion Boucicault to be sold by auction, Oct. 25 - 27, 1894. [Samuel Kreiser, auctioneer.]

The Encyclopedia Americana

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