Abra-carrrrd-abra!

The front room on the first floor. The Bookroom :: John S // D-Type Plate // No flashRecently I have purchased quite a lot of ephemera online, mostly from Etsy, and some in charity shops and antiquarian stores. Yesterday I visited a haunt from my old neighbourhood in East Kew. I’d already been on a fleeting visit there a couple months ago and bought some antique postcards, but I hadn’t had time to properly explore the rabbit warren. I made sure yesterday that I would – and in fact only hunger and an urgent need to locate a bathroom drove me away!

The shop front declares itself as Abracardabra, although they seem to answer the phone as Roycroft Booksellers, or some such less imaginative title, and it is as chock-full with ephemera, books and journals of all sorts as it has ever been. It is also quite dusty (the mark of a good antique bookstore, I surmise).

Phil Mays Illustrated Winter Annual, 1892 :: Tinto 1848 // D-Type Plate // No flashAs soon as I entered the store I was brought to a standstill by the contents of the right-hand bookshelf, and probably spent half an hour absorbed there rifling through books and journals, and two enormous boxes of generic ephemera (there were many additional boxes labelled specifically railway, shipping, opera, programmes, and the like).

I purchase this 1892 issue of Phil May’s Illustrated Winter Annual, struck by the wonderful typesetting and illustrations, and the aged, foxed patina of the pages.One of James Bell Esq.’s receipts on lovely periwinkle blue, thin paper. One of the other receipts has even more beautiful copperplate handwriting, but it was too large to fit on my scanner. Here is where I happened upon a sheaf of aged, blue receipts issued to one James Bell, Esq., in 1866–7. He purchased such an assortment of goods from what I suppose was a warehouse that perhaps he might have been a draper, or chemist. The copperplate script is beautiful to behold, if not entirely readable, and one can only marvel at how long it must have taken a clerk to write out.

A different receipt informs me that on November 1st, 1915, a Mr I Roberts of Castlemaine purchased from Geo. Clark & Son (wholesale grocers, ironmongers and general merchants): 6 Aromatic Hav 4½ [not sure what ‘hav’ could possibly be?], 100 pkts of Red Ochre, 1 doz Blk Dolly Dye, 1lb Nonpariels, ½ doz Colic Remedy, 5 Cls [cylinders, I presume] Kero, ½ doz P’mint Cure, 3 Bags New Chaff and 1 Bag Pick Onions – all to the tune of one pound seven shillings.

Eventually I moved on from the paper ephemera and wended my way past the shelves of vintage packaging, the boxes and boxes of antique postcards, the Australiana section, (I didn’t even venture into the rows of bookshelves), past the photograph of the owner with Ron Barassi (one of the most important figures in Australian football), and stepped up to the next room.

Big Boob Sketchbook :: James M // C-Type Plate // No flashThis was full of newer paperbacks, some ‘modern’ (the last two decades) and many older (1960s and earlier), and piles and piles of journals, periodicals, magazines, newspapers, sheet music – and enormous antique hard-bound volumes full of newspaper cuttings assiduously assembled by persons unknown 60, 70, 80 years ago. The cuttings are yellow with age and old glue, the pages crisp and crackly. The room is dusty with age and the whispers of people long-dead.

This was all just on the first floor.

Little Women :: James M // C-Type Plate // No flashI slowly walked up the creaky wooden steps to the second floor and was struck dumb anew at the sight of the landing, the corridor, and the two rooms filled to the rafters with old books galore upon every subject. There were more old newspapers and strange and obscure journals that you cannot imagine anyone ever read, even upon publication. I am momentarily excited when I find a shelf of PG Wodehouse books, but am by this time so dazzled by the sheer volumes contained on the shelves that I cannot see the titles for the books.

Consider the Lilies :: Tinto 1848 // C-Type Plate // No flashDumbfounded, I take some photos instead, of the front room where the afternoon light drifts through dusty windowpanes, of the parquet flooring in the back room. As I tread back downstairs, something green sticking out of a random bookshelf on the first landing catches my eye. I sit right down where I am and began pulling old exercise books from the shelves. Here are old school assignments on the roadways of France, on Indonesia and North America, all by one girl who scored quite high marks; someone else’s vintage psychology notes, and yet another lady’s recipes, hand written in pen and ink and barely decipherable to my modern glance. There are sketchbooks too, and eventually I pick out two to buy: an old Victorian Pastel Paper sketchbook, and a Cathedral Exercise Book, both unused (visit the SNAP Facebook page for pics of those).

Summer Fashions :: James M // C-Type Plate // No flashMy hands are very dirty by this time, and I long to wash them. I leave, knowing I have accumulated enough ephemera … for now. This place truly is magical, an Aladdin’s cave of vintage treasure, and it is indeed aptly named.

Check out the Abracardabra gallery for lots more photos.

~

For those Melburnians inclined to rifling through dusty bookshelves, Abra Card Abra Roycroft Antiquarian Booksellers is located at:
680 High St, East Kew; phone 03 9859 4215.