Seven Roads Gallery of Book Trade Labels

From Seven Roads:

Anyone who handles old books will have come across these small and sometimes beautiful labels pasted discreetly (more or less) into the endpapers. Booksellers, binders, printers, publishers, importers, and distributors of books used to advertise in this way their part in bringing the book to market. Most of the earliest examples shown here belong to binders (e.g., the Marcus Ward ticket, ca.1841); these were a continuation of binders' earlier practice of sewing into the binding a small ticket with their signature.

This collection began with labels found in our own books, but now it is mainly a virtual collection -- each entry is digitally scanned from books found in the excellent research library to which we repair in our spare time. We must admit to having gone from "coming across" the labels in our book-browsing to actually searching for them. Contributors from around the world have added a wonderful diversity to the collection.