A USC Libraries Special Collections exhibit reveals how the marks left on a book can tell the story of where it has been. Curated by Camila Reyes, a PhD candidate in the Department of English, Stamped, Signed, Remembered: Provenance in Books from Mexico is currently on display on the 2nd floor of Doheny Memorial Library in Special Collections.
The exhibit grew out of a single discovery. Reyes, whose research focuses on early modern English books, expected to concentrate on that area during her internship, until she came across a volume bearing a marca de fuego, or fire brand. In colonial Mexico, these brands identified the collegial or religious institution to which a book belonged. The find led Reyes to investigate other distinctive signs of provenance in books from Mexico, a natural fit with the Libraries' collecting interest in Iberian and Latin American materials.
Most of the books on view carry marcas de fuego, and a few also contain marginalia that offers further clues to their ownership. The largest volume, a polyglot dictionary, is the only book in the exhibit printed outside Mexico or Spain, having come from a press in Germany. It, too, bears a marca de fuego. For Reyes, it is "emblematic of how you can learn so much about a book's intellectual (and physical) journey simply through these physical characteristics of the book."
The exhibit is currently on display outside the USC Libraries Special Collections entrance on Doheny Library's second floor.