The Blog

We are now fully ready for the New York Antiquarian Bookfair 2018 ! Please come and say hello to Julien Comellas at Booth B24! Among the 101 fine books on display, this extremely rare collection of works by Roch Le Baillif (1540-1605), the French physician and alchemist of mythical fame! See you in the Big Apple!

The whole team of Librería Comellas wishes you a happy new year!

To celebrate the passage to 2018, we invite you to discover this very rare collection of treatises composed by French theologian Jacques Almain, a posthumous edition published in 1518!

Five hundred years old! The prime of life!

As the year 2017 comes to an end, the time has come for us to thank you, as more and more of you follow us here!

In your honour, it is our pleasure to present to you a copy of the library catalogue of a great patroness of the arts and letters, who was born on December, 29th: Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, better known as Madame de Pompadour (29 Dec. 1721 - 15 Apr. 1764)!

Dear friends and bibliophiles, on behalf of the Librería Comellas team, I wish you a very happy end of the year!

What better day than today - as the intense political campaign has finally come to an end here in Catalonia - to present to you a charming little collection of… cuckold anthems!
Printed in Montpellier, this collection of songs in Occitan patois (including one in French) was published on the occasion of the 1832 carnival, during which, as tradition dictated, the young grooms celebrated their condition as new "cournards"!
Needless to say, such anthems to the inevitability of deception and unfulfilled promises could still resonate today!

On November, 24th, 1712, Charles-Michel de l'Epée, founder of the Institute for the Deaf and Mute and inventor of "sign language", was born: a century and a half before Saussure, the Abbé de l'Epée already invited us to conceive of any language - spoken or not - as a system of signs!
As a tribute to l’Epée, here is an "ex dono authoris" copy of the original edition of his main work, published in 1776 !
Should you want to know more about this work, please sign up to our webiste !

Today, as we celebrate both World Science Day for Peace and Development and the "Dia de las librerías" here in Barcelona, we invite you to discover this precious book from 1796, intended to publicize the metric system- the implementation of which was one of the most brilliant manifestations of the rational and universalist ideals of the French Revolution!
The 17 memoirs, plates and tables that make up this collection first appeared separately, before being bound here together under a collective title; the work also contains the text of the law of Germinal, 18th, Year III (1795) which established the metric system throughout the territory of the French Republic.

May peace and centimeters be upon you!

Next week, we will look forward to seeing you at INK Fair, in London! Julien Comellas has filled his suitcases with a hundred fantastic books! Among them, this precious collection of 38 original drawings of women’s hats, certainly the work of Parisian fashion designer from the 1920s!

Did you know that, on Friday, 13th, while many around the globe fear they might be hit by some bad luck, most French people hope to get lucky and win the traditional Friday 13th lottery?!
So if you feel like defying the odds of the lottery and taking your ultimate chance at fulfilling your secret dream of a scholarly retreat on a distant island, let me recommend you read Antoine Cournot's Exposition de la Théorie des Chances et des Probabilités (Paris, 1843), of which it is our pleasure to present to you a beautiful copy of the first edition!
I know that the odds of winning are about 1 out of 139000000, but there is absolutely no way I give in to "paraskevidekatriaphobia"!
You do as you please! I will send you postcards from my island!