Explore images, digital collections, and exhibits from the Rare Book Collections.
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Rare Books Digital Gallery Explore individual items and images through the gallery, including a ribbon map, a book of hours, and a first edition of Gallileo’s Dialogues. |
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Art to Enchant: Illustrators and Shakespeare A wide range of illustrated editions of Shakespeare from 1744 through 1986. |
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Depicting Devotion: Illuminated Books of Hours from the Middle Ages Designed to introduce the viewer to the illuminations that accompany the essential texts found in Books of Hours. |
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The Influence of Medieval Design on the Arts and Crafts Movement A student-curated exhibit that explores the influence of medieval design on the Arts and Crafts Movement with a focus on the Triple Crown Collection and the Eric Gill Collection. |
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James E. and Joan Singer Schiele Print Collection Digitized Civil War prints and other historical images, representing abolition through the Civil War and reconstruction. |
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Paper’s Creatures: Print & Metamorphosis in The History of Four-Footed Beasts, Serpents, and Insects A student project exploring The History which records the world’s beasts in twelve hundred pages of text and illustrations. |
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The Philip Mills Arnold Semeiology Collection View an exhibit featuring the Philip Mills Arnold Semeiology Collection which contains approximately 1600 volumes on the history of signs, symbols, and communication. |
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The Rare Books of the Shimeon Brisman Collection in Jewish Studies Featured here are some of the highlights of the approximately 750 rare books of the Shimeon Brisman collection. |
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The State of the Union: Reconstructing a Thomas Jefferson Family Library In late 2010, a discovery revealed that at least 82 volumes in the collection had once been owned by Thomas Jefferson. |
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Terra Incognita This exhibit features early printed accounts of exploration and cultural encounters between what is known as the Old World or Europe and the New World or the Americas. |
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Urban Books This site documents the Urban Books Collection of artists’ books in Special Collections at Washington University. |
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You Can Judge A Book By Its Cover This exhibition celebrates the variety and beauty of the art of book binding with 33 different interpretations of the same book by a group of distinguished and talented book binders. |
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YouTube Videos explore items and subjects in the collections. |