Julia Mira
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Geeky Pleasures

2/25/2015

3 Comments

 
Cataloguing my library–that's about as geeky as it gets. I'm using The Library Thing which has a number of bookish features, but mainly what it allows me to do is find each book's Dewey Decimal number and generate a master list sorted by title or author. In the dim past I shelved my books by personal association but now there are so many that it gets confusing. DD it is.

My grandfather, Dr. Pavel Katz, was a book and print collector in Prague between the two World Wars, and I suspect that my grandmother, Dr. Bozena Katzova, was one too. When they escaped after Hitler's invasion in 1938, they converted everything they were allowed to take with them into a bookplate and print collection. They bought themselves medical degrees in Bolivia with some of the collection. Most of the remainder of the collection was sold after the end of the war in New York so that my grandparents could get medical degrees in the USA (this time by taking classes rather than by bribing people), but a few of the dregs survive, carefully preserved in tissue paper in a few flat boxes in my loft. Now and then I take them out and gloat.

Here's a bookplate sheet I made some years ago, back when my surname was Loyd. I print them on regular computer paper, cut them out, and rubber cement them onto the first page:
Picture
And here's some from nowadays. I do a print run of 16, and then move on to a different picture. It's amusing to open a book and see a different picture each time. The first are of pelicans I saw while visiting my charming son in Oakland last summer.
Picture
These are a version of a forest near my house:
Picture
3 Comments
Susan Dichter
3/3/2015 10:10:07 pm

Your grandparent's use of their collection in pursuit of medical degrees is a wonderful story. Do you have much information on the collection your grandfather amassed between the wars?

Reply
Julia Mira
3/5/2015 06:29:55 am

Susan - Thanks. My grandfather's collection, as it has come to me, has many "erotic" bookplates, which are usually of nude woman seen turned away from the viewer so that by today's standards, they are not very racy. There are also lots of scenes of Prague, either of famous buildings or skyines. Then there is an Art Noveau section, with muscular young men lounging under apple trees reading books, or muscular horses entwined with flowers and being petted by young ladies with books in their hands, or basically, muscular figures. When I get home next week I'll try to remember to post some of them here.

Reply
Julia Mira
3/5/2015 06:32:33 am

Oh, and I should clarify - both of them were doctors to start with. My grandfather was Jewish, and got his degree from the German-speaking University in Prague (all Jews had to speak German), in 1918. My grandmother was Czech and got her degree from the Czech-speaking University, also in Prague, in 1919.

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