Rabelais News- Zarela Archive at Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library

                                                           Owen Wister

This year, we’re moving the Annual Rabelais Book Sale to July. Previously, we’ve held it alternately in the winter or in the spring, but so many of our regular summer customers have asked for a summer sale that this year it will be:

And new this time, for the serious cookbook fan, we will have a special table of ‘reading copies’ of rare cookbooks in less than collector’s condition, including many 19th century books.  These books will be priced individually, but at much lower prices than you might pay for the same books in very good or fine condition. You can own an early Mrs. Beeton, or Kitchiner’s The Cook’s Oracle, for less than the cost of a single modern cookbook!

So see you at the sale. We will have boxes, or you can bring shopping bags. No early birds!

A new project for Samantha: A Gathering of Stitches

Many of you likely know that Samantha’s been working on a new project. For the past few months, she’s been busy planning and securing space for a new maker lab in Portland, one just dedicated to fiber and textiles. It’s called A Gathering of Stitches, and will be a 4500 square foot space dedicated to sewing, knitting, quilting, dyeing, silk screen printing, and much more. Everyone interested in these activities, from complete novices to experienced folks looking to grow a small business can use the space to, as she says, “Learn, Make, Do”.The new space is in East Bayside, Portland, home of so many great small business, especially food businesses, including Tandem Coffee, Bunker Brewing, Urban Farm Fermentory, Maine Craft Distilling, and (depending on the time of day), the Small Axe Food Truck.You can see images of the space as it comes together, and otherwise follow progress on the Gathering of Stitches blog. It won’t be long before she’ll be announcing the workshop schedule, so stay tuned.Samantha is putting blood, sweat and tears into this project, along with a fair amount of money, but she’s also running an Indie-gogo campaign to crowd source some of that money. That just means she’s taking donations. There’s a cool list of things you get for helping out, plus a great video about the project that

If you know us from Rabelais, you know we put everything we have into a project, so you can imagine how great this new project will be when it opens later this summer. I hope you’ll consider helping out, even just a little, and also help spread the word.

Thanks!

The Zarela Martinez Culinary Archive Placed with Harvard University’s Schlesinger LibraryRabelais is pleased to announce that we have placed the Culinary Archive of Chef Zarela Martinez with the Schlesinger Library.
Zarela Martinez is one of America’s top culinary professionals and a 2013 inductee into the James Beard Foundation Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America. Her achievements as a chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, food television host, product developer and merchandiser place her as a pioneering woman in the world of the multi-platform food personality.While it remains a less visible part of our activities, Rabelais has always been involved in the appraisal and/or sale of the archives and papers of important figures in the worlds of food, drink and beyond. Archives frequently consist of original book manuscripts and typescripts, correspondence, notebooks and research, photographs and other documentation of a person’s life. When placed with a top research institution, usually a university library, these materials form the raw materials of history for the scholars of the future.

 

Zarela’s archive will now be shelved in the same magnificent library with the papers of Julia Child, Elizabeth David, Avis DeVoto, Amelia Earhart, and Susan B. Anthony. What a thrill to have worked with Zarela Martinez, and to see these papers find their new home at the Schlesinger.

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