A love affair with beautiful old books (and each other)

Orinda couple who deal in rare, antique books, manuscripts, and illustrations share their valuable collection at this weekend's international Antiquarian Book Fair in San Francisco.

Thousands of people from around the world who love, sell, and buy rare and antiquarian books and manuscripts will come together at San Francisco’s 42nd Annual Antiquarian Book Fair starting Friday. Among those will be two book dealers from Orinda. They are the husband-and-wife team of John Windle and Chris Loker, who have became internationally renowned for their collections of medieval manuscripts, illustrations, and texts related to English romantic poet and artist William Blake, and children’s books dating back to the 1750s.

Even in this Internet age, Loker says there is still a huge market for rare, old books: “In some ways, the Internet reinforces the passion for books as aesthetic and scholarly objects. To hold a fine antique book, with real scholarly content, is an enhanced pleasure in this digital era.”

Loker and Windle have antiquarian bookshops across the hallway from each other at 49 Geary Street, a non-descript building near San Francisco’s Union Square that houses some of Northern California’s top art galleries. (You can read about my visit to 49 Geary Street art galleries, including Loker and Windle’s shops, in the March issue of Diablo).

Windle, originally from England, has been in the business of buying and selling rare books to private collectors, institutions (such as libraries and museums), and other book dealers, for more than four decades. He is well known for his expertise on the works of William Blake, one of the great English poets of the Romantic age. Blake was also a visionary artist and printmaker who created his own illuminated prints to illustrate his collections of poetry, including the classic Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Windle has for sale various books featuring Blake’s poetry and art works, including an 1810 fresco printed by Blake on India paper, which depicts Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims and is selling for $27,500. Windle’s most valuable item is a $375,000 illuminated manuscript from Southern France, circa 1400. It is a “book of hours,” a type of medieval manuscript that contains a collection of religious texts, prayers, and psalms.

He and Chris Loker met in 2001, when she, a longtime book lover, stopped in his shop to browse. Once upon a time, she had majored in English at Stanford University but went into the corporate world, rising to a top executive’s position in human resources at Charles Schwab and Co. Her first husband had died two years earlier, Windle was divorced, and they wound up dating and then married in 2003. Loker left her corporate job and worked in her husband’s shop.

In 2006, they decided to open a second shop that Loker now runs. Her Children’s Book Gallery focuses on rare and antiquarian children’s books and original book art published between 1750 and 1950. These include nursery rhymes, pop-up books, and alphabet books.

One of her oldest books is a 1785 “Hieroglyphick Bible,” which was printed in England to teach young children of the well-to-do basic bible stories. Her most valuable item is an 1865 watercolor painting that was to be the opening page for a book called Nine Nursery Rhymes, which was never published. The artist was the well-known 19th century illustrator Walter Crane. The painting is much like an illuminated manuscript page for children and is valued at $25,000.

Loker and Windle will each have booths at the book fair, which Loker says is the largest antiquarian book fair in the world. More than 240 rare booksellers from the United States and around the world will be participating.

The fair runs Friday through Sunday, February 13-15, at the Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 Eighth St. (at Brannan St.), San Francisco.  For more information, visit the fair’s website, www.sfbookfair.com.

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