Honey & Wax Booksellers

10/02/2026

“Sometimes a nicer sculpture is to be able to provide a living for your family.” Retrospective of antiquarian bookseller Ben Kinmont’s “project art” and the work of his Antinomian Press, at Yoshi Hill, 41 Bleecker St, through November 8. “Kinmont sees his work as one of the world’s leading dealers of rare books on food and drink as an extension of his life as an artist, making the business he founded in 1998 one of the longest and most unusual artistic projects ever undertaken” — .

09/30/2026

It’s that time of year— meet this year’s Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize winner, Darby Ronning, for her collection of 20th-century science fiction by and about women, and the self-published zines that defined the scene! Full description of Ronning’s collection (and those of our honorable mentions) at link in bio.

09/30/2026

It’s that time — meet the winners of the 2026 Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize!

In 2017, Honey & Wax Booksellers established an annual prize for American women book collectors, aged 30 years and younger. Our goal, at the time, was to expand the popular perception of who book collectors are (and can be) by highlighting original collections built by young women, often without the...

09/30/2026

Souvenir ticket printed on the frozen Thames during the London Frost Fair of 1814. Set during the last of London’s “Little Ice Ages,” the 1814 fair began on February 1, when the river froze solid between London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge. The makeshift carnival featured music, dancing, skating, drinking, grilling, bonfires, fairground rides and games, even an elephant. Enterprising printers set up presses on the ice to issue commemorative tickets, like this one, to revelers. The fair broke down the night of February 5, the date this ticket was printed: “Towards the evening, the concourse became thinned; rain fell in some quantity; – MAISTER ICE gave some loud cracks, and floated with the printing presses, booths, &c. to the no small dismay of publicans, typographers, &c. In short, this icy palace of Momus, this fairy frost work, was soon to be dissolved.”

09/28/2026

Signed limited edition of Eudora Welty’s Depression-era essay A Pageant of Birds (1974). In the late 1930s, Welty attended a costume pageant at the Farish Street Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi. Members of the congregation dressed as their favorite birds (“be what you want to”), singing and dancing as they circled the spectators: “All came in with an assurance that sprang from complete absorption in their roles – erect in their bright wings and tails and crests, flapping their elbows, dipping their knees, hopping and turning and preening to the music.” After the pageant, Welty offered to photograph the participants in costume, and the images in A Pageant of Birds are the result: two photographs appear here for the first time in print.

09/27/2026

Four Dialogues for Two Voices and Two Pianos (1969), with lyrics by Frank O’Hara and music by Ned Rorem. These four art songs follow the rise and fall of a modern romantic relationship, from the first meeting on a Brooklyn-bound subway to the final break: “‘you win the bet / I’m off to Siam / I’ll climb to Tibet / the eternal I am’ . . . ‘You hateful man! / Leave while you can.’” In his introduction, Rorem notes: “The singers should not limit themselves to classifications of tenor and soprano. If negotiable, they may be baritone and mezzo. In fact, anyone who wants to sing the piece may sing the piece.” Cover design by O’Hara and Rorem’s mutual friend, New York artist Joe Brainard.

09/24/2026

OK! Summer’s officially over. Spent all day photographing new stock at Taino Studios, then headed to the roof to toast our first year in Philly. Back to the books!

09/22/2026

Detail from Le Luth Français, a Parisian pocket almanac for the year 1821, providing music and lyrics for popular songs of the day. The collection includes works by several women lyricists and composers: “Moeris” by Sophie Gay, “Veux tu m’aimer” by Madame de Fontry, and “Vous qui priez” and “Isabelle” by Sophie Gail. Miniature bookplate of collector and bibliographer Félix Meunié, author of Bibliographie de quelques almanachs illustrés des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles (1906).

09/20/2026

Final snapshots from Berlin: 1) textile design by German illustrator Janosch in the children’s literature collection at the Staatsbibliothek 2) the notebooks Beethoven used to communicate after he became deaf — people would write their side of the conversation and he would respond to them vocally 3) with Till Schröder at the Berlin Rare Book Week screening of The Booksellers, sponsored by the Pirckheimer Society 4) view from the Humboldtforum on the closing night of the ILAB Congress.

09/19/2026

On my way home from the ILAB Congress in Berlin, an intense and only sporadically photographed experience on my part. Here: the headquarters of the East German secret police, meticulously preserved at the Stasi Museum Berlin, along with millions of citizen surveillance files saved from destruction by the protestors who stormed the complex in 1990. Archive and survive (not only in that order).