Mill Valley rare bookseller helps showcase, preserve history
Although Mark Funke has attended other antiquarian book fairs as a rare bookseller, the California International Antiquarian Book Fair has a special place in his heart. It’s where the Mill Valley resident has fond memories going with his father at a young age and in college with his parents and then-girlfriend, now wife, Joanna.
After practicing law for more than a decade, he started transitioning into bookselling, and it wasn’t long before he was hooked. Now, things are coming full circle for the 44-year-old as he’ll be exhibiting at the California International Antiquarian Book Fair for the first time from Feb. 11 through 13 in Oakland. For more information and to get tickets ($10 to $25), go to cabookfair.com.
Surrounded by books, archives, manuscripts, photographs and other assorted paper in his office at 35 Miller Ave., No. 300, in Mill Valley — which is open by appointment — he sells to libraries and research institutions around the world as well as to private collectors.
Q What inspired your transition into this business?
A Basically I got burned out of law. You are dealing with a lot of offensive personalities. People don’t want to see you and they hate the whole process talking to a lawyer. Books are the polar opposite. You sell someone a rare book that they have been looking for and they are super happy. I love that I make people happy. I became a lot more passionate about the books and with a few good finds, you get the bug.
Q What stuck with you about these book fairs?
A Some of the books did. I remember my wife bought this little Finnish architecture book, and we still have it on our bookshelf. The weirdest thing is when you first see a rare book dealer with something you remember as a kid.
Q How does history play a role in the work you do?
A It is preserving history and also finding new historical angles or new things to research. What sells best these days are original source documents that are historically relevant for research purposes, for discovering new things and for having information that’s not on the internet. One of the things that we are bringing to the book fair is an anti-Einstein archive by Ernst Gehrcke and he didn’t like Einstein and disagreed with a lot of his theories, so it’s a collection of letters and documents pertaining to German patent law but there are references to Einstein. So, historically, it’s interesting to learn more about Einstein, that time in Germany and what was going on.
Q Where do you normally find your material?
A Pre-COVID, I would travel to Europe generally twice a year. I would go in January for a big antiquarian book fair in Germany as well as in the summer and travel a wide circuit of book dealers and booksellers.
Q Is the industry growing?
A It’s hard to tell, because there are a lot of older dealers who are retiring, so more and more bookshops come into the market. I am seeing these groups of people who are like 60 and older who are hard-core collectors, but also a strong interest by young people. It does seem like there’s a resurgence in the tangible, the physical, in the younger generation like collecting photo albums.
Q One of your specialties is German books. What inspired that?
A I am a dual citizen, German American, born in the United States to German parents. Growing up, I went off-and-on to Germany, did a year in college there, and after my son was born, we decided to move to Berlin in 2014, and that’s really when I started doing more of the book business. I got to know a lot of the dealers, and made my first big find. I had found this manuscript cookbook in a rare bookshop in Berlin. I did my research and it turns out the guy who wrote the book was the cook to the German kaiser, so these were the recipes of what the kaiser liked to eat. It was sold to the Library of Congress. It can be like a needle in the haystack, but it gives you a rush. My whole background being a dual citizen and going back there developed into a passion for German books. I later bought out another dealer, Ken Karmiole, so all his books are pre-1800s scholarly books, so that’s a totally different direction.