April 23, 2006 "Heavenly Craft: The Woodcut in Early Printed Books" Earns Exhibition Catalog Award

"A Heavenly Craft: The Woodcut in Early Printed Books,” an exhibition catalog published cooperatively by the Library of Congress in association with George Braziller Inc., has been awarded a 2006 Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab “American Book Prices Current” Exhibition Award. The award will be presented at the American Library Association’s 2006 Annual Conference, which will be held June 24-27 in New Orleans.

The Leab awards, funded by an endowment established by the editors of “American Book Prices Current,” are given for excellence in the publication of catalogs and brochures that accompany exhibitions of library and archival materials, as well as for electronic exhibitions of such materials. Winners are selected by the Exhibition Awards Committee of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association.

“The catalog presents scholarly descriptions of the early printed books in the Rosenwald Collection,” said Marcia Reed, chair of the ACRL/RBMS award committee. “It tells the fascinating stories of their acquisition by Mr. Rosenwald, the retired chairman of Sears Roebuck and Co., who was adding important examples from another collection owned by C.W. Dyson Perrins, heir to the Leab estate.

“A Heavenly Craft,” a 224-page hardcover catalog with 100 illustrations is available for $50 in bookstores and from the Library of Congress Sales Shop. The Library’s Sales Shop also offers a softcover edition of the book for $35 (credit card orders: 888-682-3556). Online orders can be placed at www.loc.gov/shop/.

The catalog accompanied an exhibition of the same title, which was on view at the Library April 7 through July 9, 2005. The exhibition can be viewed online at www.loc.gov/exhibits/heavenlycraft/.