Mary Green writes a blog I have long admired.  Her recent article (and her altered book & gluebook art) both deserve a second look.  I’ve reposted the article in its entirety……..

After looking at my art pieces or glue book pages, people sometimes ask where I get the graphics I use, or the handwriting or the illustrations. You might think I have a huge ephemera collection…actually I have a huge book collection.

Here are a couple of inexpensive, innocuous little titles that would be easy to walk past…

They almost sound like we’re back in high school, but not so fast…open them up and flip through the pages…

For $4.50, the 1876 Common School Book Keeping yields pages & pages of different ledger examples, with lots of different styles of entries and handwriting

The 1882 Guide to Correct Language is priced at $5.00. This grammar book is chock full of beautiful graphical headings, illustrations and printers ornaments.

Surprised? At the end of the 1800s, many books were highly decorated, no matter the subject. Old business books are a treasure trove of graphics, illustrations and just plain humor. C’mon…the woman showing how to talk on the telephone in the downloads album? Business book.

I found each of these books in antique stores, where prices can be ridiculous. But there’s not much of a collectors market for old accounting and adult grammar books, so the prices are usually very reasonable.

By the way, with about 300 pages between these 2 books, that’s 150 pieces of paper, so a little over $0.06 per sheet. I do the math with books all the time. Weird, I know.