bookhouse

eric has discovered a treasure trove of amazingness right here in arlington.  we like to buy old prints from eastern market or online and frame them.  they are usually maps or old drawings of mammals since that's what we're interested in.  we keep thinking that instead of buying individual prints, we should just buy the old books.  then we'd have tons of prints to choose from and would spend way less money! 

then eric found bookhouse.  we spent hours there on tuesday, and when they closed told them we'd be back on wednesday.  and we were, and then back again on thursday adding to our pile with each visit.  it's like each book you picked up took you on a little adventure through time - cheesy but true.

lots of wood bound books with no shortage of copyrights dating back to the 15, 16, and 1700s!

i'm a sucker for old maps and found this old atlas meant to accompany a "modern geography" text book.  it was printed in 1830 and is quite interesting/entertaining.  australia, for example, is labeled new holland.  india is called hindoostan, south america is only made up of 8 countries, and as you can see below, africa is missing a huge amount of information!

the atlas also includes a racist classification of people.  apparently you could be savage like indians (american indians), half civilized like morocco, civilized like constantinople, or enlightened like new york.  i think they got it backwards!

north america shows the time when mexico was still a part of texas ;)

another cool book we found and bought for eric called the living world printed in 1872 is full of information about and beautiful plate illustrations of plants and animals.  i particularly liked the colorful cover page and the drawing of the captive chimpanzee.  i would so love to know why this guy has a rabbit!  did he really have it? is it a pet or food?

one room of bookhouse (the state room) has tons of books on various states in the us.  there are rows and rows on virginia but then very little on western states as many weren't granted statehood until the turn of the century.  that alone blows my mind.

most books on the west addressed stereotypes and urged immigrants to move there by providing lovely descriptions of the western lands and people and even include the best routes to take and how to interact with american indians.

this texas book is pretty comical.  they played up texan stereotypes (though many are just truths) with humorous stories and anecdotes.  it also includes tons of racism.  although i had a hard time finding books published between 1800 and 1950 that didn't.

and i'll leave you with this lovely plate of fowl.