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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

I have seen this one attributed to Posada, but it might just be because it's so similar to this one by him. No help on the owner, though.

José Guadalupe Posado engraving of the Mexican coat of arms with an eagle eating a snake perched on a cactus.

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Democracy dies in darkness, as the WaPo used to say, even if it was just a marketing gimmick. El Hijo poked holes in the famously France glazing and despotic 35-year reign of Porfirio Díaz until they were arrested for flying a banner reading "La Constitución ha muerto" in 1903.

cover of El Hijo del Ahuizote with an illustration of a burro politician humping a Pueblan worker while a rich businessman stands by ready to hit him with a large branch? Can't lie, this one is hard to parse, but I think we get the general idea.

illustration with a complex allegorical image of European politics - Bulgaria getting ready to blow-up, Russian bear, ridiculous French rooster, German vulture etc

illustration of a "Frenchified" gentleman bent double under an umbrella labeled religious fanaticism.

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Images from the relentlessly anti-Porfirian weekly El Hijo del Ahuizote. Repeatedly ordered closed, it stuck around giving Díaz shit for some 18 years, chronicling the disappearing freedoms and slow death of Mexican democracy.

cover of El Hijo del Ahuizote with an illustration of a skeleton brandishing a law riding a horse labeled despotism.

illustration detail from El Hijo del Ahuizote picturing Benito Juarez sinking on a ship labeled "patriotism"

cover of El Hijo del Ahuizote with a boy with a torn flag and a stern looking psychologist.

illustration satirizing the revolutionary elements of Texas and their claims to Mexico. The Texan looks insane and armed and the Mexican long suffering - based, as the kids say.

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

This initial S with the faces is cracking me up. [from Ortus Sanitatis en François, Paris, ca 1500)

close up of an illustration of ironwort with an initial letter S below with two faces both, probably, thinking "fuck ice".

010

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

From Bruce's 1882 type specimen book which, remarkably, is built around de Vinne's "The Invention of Printing" - you can basically read it like a really weirdly designed book. Such a cool idea - it apparently runs through all their specimen books and supplements for 25+ years.

title page of Bruce's Specimens of Printing Types, 1882

Type speciments, mostly large, shadow fonts, featuring text based on historic French and Dutch printers.

Type faces on the left with text from French and German printers, all caps serif typefaces. On the right type ornaments and text like "Printing introduced in Constantinople"

A mix of serif type faces, text of famous English, American, Italian printers.

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

The Epistles of Paul to Timothy printed in Sequoyah's Cherokee syllabary in Park Hill, OK in 1853. Untrimmed on a single sheet 24pp, with a few nibbles. Just slightly too wide for my scanner.

single folded 12mo sheet of The Epistles of Paul to Timothy printed in Cherokee - one corner with a mouse nibble.

010

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Pair of bookplates and a bookseller ticket from a Kipling endpaper, applied ca. 1909. The left one is really of its time and sports a totally insane typeface choice.

a pair of bookplates and a bookseller ticket on endpapers. The bookplate on the left show two nude figures, a man and a woman, hanging out on a microscope stage (the man, naturally, turned away). The right bookplate with a landscape and labeled "Hazel Mills Prescott Her Husband's book"

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

and here are some ICE resources from www.lucemass.org

vió a ICE? llame a la línea de luce 617-370-5023

see ICE? call the luce hotline 617-370-5023

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

I have a tiny booth off to the side, look for the skulls

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Bringing hundreds of these José Guadalupe Posada and Manuel Manilla engravings to the @abaararebooks.bsky.social Boston Fair which, regrettably is the weekend after Día de los Muertos this year.

calavera beckoning a ku klux klan member in full robes with a burning cross amidst a pile of skulls.

calaveras en monton: a group of skeletons advertising a posada exhibition

calaveras de coyotes y meseras monkey calavera with a hat amidst skulls above a poem warning of drunk customers getting rolled by waitresses

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

The only mark made in this 1888 Grand Rapids, MI cookbook is a big X next to chili sauce.

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

A few more large format Posadas and, to mix it up, one by the famously overshadowed (if such a thing is possible) Manuel Manilla who preceded and overlapped with Posada at A. Vanegas and may or may not have been the popularizer of the calavera.

Alfabeto Fisonomico

Antonio Vanegas Arroyo, Sta Teresa No 40, ca. 1899

26 illustrations of hand gestures, one of each letter.

La Caida de Madero….Ibis de Paz
Imprenta de A. Vanegas Arroyo, 2a Santa Teresa 43, Mexico (1913)

Broadside song regarding the Decena Trágica in February 1913 when Madero, the elected president, was overthrown. With a Posada engraved portrait of General Don Felix Diaz, nephew of Porfirio.

Juego de la Oca (Game of the Goose)

Boardgame with 63 squares illustrated with figures, calaveras, animals, etc

Antonio Vanegas Arroyo, Sta Teresa No 1, Mexico ca 1900-1910

15 ¾” x 11 ½”

Two copies, light wear in the blank margins, relief printing and type.

020

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Here's the whole thing 11x16, Antonio Vanegas Arroyo, Mexico, 1905.

Large engraving by Jose Guadalupe Posada of San Antonio de Padua holding a child and a feather with a border.

Vignette illustration on verso with description of a miracle in San Luis de Potosi. Bit of worming in top margin visible. Crazy 3d shadow typesetting in bottom section

000

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

The use of a shadow typeface with a typo (I'm imagining they only had 2 Ns) in this 1905 José Guadalupe Posada broadside is so great.

vignette image of San Antonio de Padua with song about a miracle in San Lyuis Potosi with headlines and text in various serif fonts and a sans serif shadow typeface for "San Antoio de Padua" (sic).

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

Nice shots of the shop in the background. The book there is Grimod de La Reynière's Manuel des amphitryons (Paris, 1808). I dug out Pliny's description of proto mayonnaise for the interview (from a 1559 Aldine ed), but it didn't make the cut.

$image of title page from \pliny's history - Aldus, 1559$ Image of title page from Grimod de La Reynière's Manual de Amphitryons, 1808, with image of a chicken being carved in midair.

Image of title page from Grimod de La Reynière's Manual de Amphitryons, 1808, with image of a chicken being carved in midair.

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

I was on @cbssundaymorning.bsky.social a couple weeks ago talking about mayo, where it really comes from and what it's really called.

finger pointing to possible names of mayonnaise in Grimod de la Reyniere's Manual de Amphitryons.

attractive middle-aged man reading from old book while interviewer looks on

image of an article on mayonnaise history from hilobrow.com

two seated men conducting interview in a rare book shop.

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

This one is funny - Posada was a indefatigable, critic of president/dictator Porfirio Diaz, but it often had to be subtle. Posada depicted people from every walk of life, but the only one who didn't look like a person was Diaz, here depicted as a lumpy guy with a dumb moustache and too much hat.

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

A few famous ones, including Posada's contemporary/precursor Manuel Manilla's Calavera Tapatia.

Group of smaller engravings of calavera, soldiers, drinkers, musicians.

Calavera drinking tequila with a calavera woman over his shoulder.

Smaller calaveras - a bishop, a disembodies skull drinking, etc.

010

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Calavera running for office, conmen (or a cat dressed as a conman) ready to take advantage of drunks and dupes, predatory waitresses, dancing.

José Guadalupe Posada engraving of a skeleton beckoning to a Ku Klux Klan member with a burning corss standing amidst a pile of skulls.

Posada engraving depicting a group of calaveras running for office.

Calavera picturing a conman and waitresses in a field of skulls.

Skeletons dancing, drinking, frightening people. Corrido at the bottom.

100

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

A few calavera - the first a great 18" x 13" (a little too big for my scanner) two sided flyer for an exhibition of Posada's work (no date ca. early 1960s)

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

earthquakes, jealousy, and lots of firing squads

Engraving picturing an earthquake in Chilapa in 1907 with people fleeing.

Engraving of a woman holding her head, story of Ramon Palma who visited crimes upon women of Mexico city in 1907 with his extreme jealousy.

Jesus Negrete is seated before his execution in this engraving.

Engraving of the firing squad of Rosalio Millan - Milan is up against the wall being fired upon.

000

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

A lot of Posada's engravings were of current events: uprisings (in the Valle Nacional), rebellions (Veracruz 1912), floods, train derailments.

Engraving of a worker uprising in the Valle Nacional

View of Veracruz from the sea with a ship bombarding a fortress.

Engraving of a flood in Celaya with people drowning in foreground

Engraving of a train derailment - engine and bodies pictured.

100

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Booklet covers featuring demons, cookery, burros, and a classic calavera depicting ideas for dispatching presidential candidates. The burro booklet features the printing house of Antonio Vanegas depicted on the rear - he printed almost all of Posadas works.

Three panels of calaversa, the central wielding a leg bone - a satire on presidential politics.

Booklet cover with demon and some puritans.

Booklet cover with a clown riding a burro and the printer Antonio Vanegas depicted on the rear cover.

Booklet cover with a woman in a well appointed kitchen.

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Cataloging a big collection of José Guadalupe Posada broadsides and I'm going to throw some up here. First off: booklets full of embroidery patterns, "children's theater" pamphlets, a calavera on a recruiting mission to a cemetery.

Four pamphlets "Muestras para Borado" embroidery samples each with a seated woman on the cover embroidering.

Two fold out plates of embroidery samples incorprating plant elements.

Six covers of children's pamphlets from the Galeria del Teatro Infantil series. Five with people depicted on the covers along with city scenes, a demon, musicians, etc.

A calavera - an animated skeleton - in a graveyard apparently trying to convince other skeletons - many just skulls - to come along with him.

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

Shocked this didn't catch on. (from the ads at rear of an 1875 copy of Wrinkles and Recipes from Scientific American)

Sheldon's Auxiliary Car Seat: engraving of men on a train, one sitting on an auxiliary seat that projects just in front of the other man's normal seat. Both have expressions suggesting they don't find this arrangement to be at all strange.

020

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Circulating library rules, Channel Islands, ca. early 1800s (from a 1605 edition of Rabelais)

021

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

The first Elzevier ediiton of Rabelais in a nice early (but later) binding with decorative endpapers. With the bottle page, la dive bouteille, the divine bottle.

Green morocco book bindings, ca. late 18th century

Title page in red and black to Rabelais' oeuvres dated 1663

two pages of text from les oeuvres, the right hand page with the text, a poem, inside the divine bottle

011

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

His later in life cartoons are worth checking out - there is a nice Fantagraphics book on them www.fantagraphics.com/collections/... and a great article at The Comics Journal (that I pulled these images from)

Jingle Jangle Comics cover showing prince holding an anchor with his thumb in a pie

$Jingle Jangle Comics page showing the sea going rajah and the milk fed fraction$ Jingle Jangle Comics showing the musical whifflesnort and the red hot music roll. The whifflesnort a sort of elk/bunny carries a "Whang-Doo" musical instrument, an elongated sort of guitar.

Jingle Jangle Comics showing the musical whifflesnort and the red hot music roll. The whifflesnort a sort of elk/bunny carries a "Whang-Doo" musical instrument, an elongated sort of guitar.

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Mock up a Rip Van WInkle interactive book by illustator, puzzle designer and natural born weirdo cartoonist George Carlson.

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Botanical sample in an 1828 Viennese cookbook.

Old, dried, plant, green and light yellow leaves, on page of old cookbook.

020

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

The frontispieces for Grimod de La Reynière's Almanach des Gourmands, 1-8.

Bibliotheque d'un Gourmand (table laden with food in foreground, booksehelves filled with food in background)

Les audiences d'un Gourmand (a line of women bring a seated man dishes - room is filled with shelves of food)

Séance d'un Jury de Gourmands dégustateurs; group of tasters sit around a table

Les méditations d'un gourmand. Figure sits at a table thinking with a pyramid shelf of food behind him.

1105

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Interesting wear on the frontis plate from the 1st to the 2nd edition of Grimod de La Reynière's Almanach. Obscuring some details but revealing others previously obscured by the darkness of the first impression. One of the great frontispieces A+

frontis and title pages of the 1st and 2nd editons of Grimod de La Reynière's Almanach des Gourmands showing differences in the impressions.

020

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

Manicules are great, sure; but cufficules? The best.

manicule with fancy cuff and green sleeve

manicule with fancy cuff in brown and black

manicule with fancy cuff, green sleeve, red bracelet, alongside marginalia in Latin

514544

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

1788 Spanish recipes from Manuela Gonzalez: miel rosada, buñuelos de viento, pan rey, distilled cider. The Pan Rey recipe looks like a recipe for Rosca de Reyes, Three Kings Day cake.

061

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Wild marbled paper cover and a charming bookplate on this 1796 biography of Baron Von Knigge who had a falling out with the Illuminati and then wrote a famous tell all about it (Über den Umgang mit Menchen, 1788).

front and rear cover of a book bound in paper marbled in red, yellow and black

bookplate with lute in ofregorund, church in background

050

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Images from a ca. 1915 mushroom album; samples, a drawing, spore print. That dryad saddle is crazy - fine work getting it so vivid and yet so flat.

030

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

A few fun endpapers on some 19tgh century manuscript cookbooks I'm cataloging.

marbled endpapers, big red and orange blobs with fblue and green in between

marbled paper, yellow, green, blue with fine gradiation

marbled paper, purple, orange, brown; drab but with fine detail

0100

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 12/10/2023

Just spent a ridiculous amount of time looking for Geoffroy Tory's Lorraine Cross printer's mark on this engraving from a charmingly fraudulent "translation" of a 1552 romance by Nicolas Herberay.

Engraving of a group of Knights on horseback in front of a castle with a guard at the gate.

110

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 05/10/2023

Sweet lid on this fancy fellow from the rear endpaper of a 1510 Paris imprint.

Notes and small doodled portrait of a renaissance guy in a hat

020

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 26/09/2023

The actual bunny that will only eat chocolate and the bunny made of bunny poop that is SHAPED like a chocolate bunny...a lot of bunny stuff to think about lately.

020

Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 26/09/2023

Posada broadside about a rabbit that will only eat chocolate.

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Tom Nealon @condimentking.bsky.social · 15/09/2023

Slightly doinked ear on my Dieter Roth rabbit poop rabbit makes him seem more approachable, I think.

Dieter Roth rabbit poop rabbit ca. 1970 sitting on kitchen table

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