Thelma Ziemer (4 May 1901 - 2 April 1994). Antiquarian bookseller with her husband Otto Ziemer in Berekley, California in the 1930s and 1940s. Thelma Zeimer then moved to New York City and in 1954 with Ethel Weed as a partner operated the East and West Shops, Inc. The shop moved to Newton, Connecticut in 1969.
According to the Connecticut Death Index, 1949-2012, Thelma Brown Ziemer was born in Michigan and died in Hamden, Connecticut. Her occupation is recorded on her death record as Book Seller.
Per a reminiscence by Barney Rosenthal in the article “Viewing the Past: From the Archives” in the A.B.A.A. Newsletter (Vol. 6, #3), Spring 1995 (page 9),
“I first met her when I arrived as a student in Berkeley in 1939. She and her husband Otto Ziemer had a fine antiquarian bookstore on Bancroft Way at the corner of Telegraph Avenue. . . . I'm not sure how long their Berkeley bookshop lasted but I think it was gone by the time I was discharged from the Army in 1946. Thelma eventually moved to New York (she was a widow by then) and opened the East and West Shop together with a partner, Ethel Weed, who was very knowledgeable about the Orient and had served in some sort of official capacity in the Far East during WW2. Their bookshop specialized in book on the Far East and was a great success; it was once mentioned in The New Yorker and Thelma told me for years afterwards people would come as a result of this brief write-up. Both she and Ethel retired when the business got too onerous for them to handle. If I remember correctly, they tried to sell the shop but couldn't find any buyers they liked.”
An article by Anne Heywood in the Logansport [Indiana] Press of 7 December 1960 under the headline “Unusual Type of Shop Unites East and West” notes
“East and West Shops, Inc., started in New York about six years ago by cousins Ethel B. Weed and Thelma Zeimer [sic]. . . . During the war years, while Thelma Zeimer [sic] was acquiring considerable experience in book and print shops, in both California and New York, her cousin, Ethel Weed, in public relations in Cleveland, was handling a recruiting campaign for the WAC. But so great was her zeal that she ended up by recruiting herself and packing off for Japan. . . . Because they are above street level and not likely to attract the attention of passersby, the cousins have cultivated 65% of their business through direct mail. The shop's semi-annual catalogue of 1,200 special book titles now goes out to a mailing list of over 5,000.”
(Heywood also notes that it “took at least two and a half years for the shop to become a paying proposition.”)
As of 20 August 2020, WorldCat notes a copy of a 1957 East and West Shop, Inc. catalogue held at the British Library.
