Popular library display is drawing to a close
MORE than 8,000 people have visited a Guille-Alles exhibition of some of the library’s rarest books.
Boundless Curiosity draws to a close on Saturday, after more than two months.
The exhibition helped islanders learn how two emigrants to America returned to Guernsey with a book collection to open a library.
Head of marketing at the library Adam Bayfield said they had been blown away by the community’s reaction.
‘It’s been such a heart-warming response,’ he said.
‘We have had lots of repeat visitors, and also attracted a lot of people to come to the library for the first time.’
Thomas Guille and Frederick Alles were childhood friends who left the island as teenagers in the 1830s to seek their fortune in New York.
‘The exhibition is of their treasures.
‘Hopefully we have done justice to their story.’
And Mr Bayfield is confident that the pair would have been proud of the library today.
‘They were remarkably foresighted and wrote a constitution for the library that it should respond to and serve the community. They wanted it to be a community hub, which is exactly the ethos we have today.’
The star attraction of the exhibition has been the The Birds of America – a metre high volume containing over 1,000 illustrations of almost 500 species of north American birds.
The book, considered to be the archetype of wildlife illustration, was published in instalments between 1827 and 1838 and the library has one of only 120 known copies.
A different page from the book has been on display each week, but for the final few days a new page will be revealed every day, finishing on Saturday with the flamingo illustration on display when the exhibition began.
‘We have come full circle and are finishing with probably the most famous picture in the book. As we opened on a Friday the flamingo was only on display for a couple of days.’
After Saturday the Birds of the America and the other rare books will return to a secure room to be kept under lock and key.
But Mr Bayfield is hopeful that one or two could return to the public rooms of the library.
The exhibition is free to visit during normal library hours.
