The Bookplates of Louis Rhead

Louis Rhead (1857-1926)        was among other things

a writer, bookbinder, and book illustrator

 as well as the designer of bookplates, posters and book covers .

Here is a link to hundreds of Rhead illustrations

http://www.tumblr.com/search/louis%20rhead

Rhead's Photo in A Collection Of Book Plate Designs by Louis Rhead published by W. Porter Truesdell

.  The Bookplates of Louis Rhead

 The Angling plate shown below is the same as Fearing # 210 .The inscription in ink on the top is faint.
It says"To Oscar T. Blackburn." . On the grey paper border is written" Printed by Peter Pratt on Birchbark
for Louis Rhead."

If you have any Rhead bookplates not shown here please send me a scan and they will be added.
Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

If any of you have information about Peter Pratt the printer please send it to me.

SEE YOU NEXT WEEK
.

.

Alfred Robert Louis Dohme's Bookplate

Alfred Robert Louis Dohme's Bookplate

by Michele Behan

                As both a book collector and bookplate collector, I always attend book sales with an eye toward interesting bookplates hidden within not-so-interesting books.

Books published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries tend to yield more bookplates than recently published titles, so it never hurts to flip open an

older book and check out the front endpaper.  Now that I know how to remove bookplates without damaging the book (thanks to this blog!), I always look for interesting bookplates to add to my collection.

        That is why, when I recently attended the Friends of the Library book sale held at Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania on July 30, I picked up an otherwise boring Harvard Classics 1910 edition of The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini.

When I flipped the cover, I was fascinated by the commissioned bookplate within, featuring a border of a pair of snakes weaving through vines surrounding the central motif of a whimsical scribe.

The name on the bookplate, Alfred Robert Louis Dohme, meant nothing to me, but the design was sufficiently compelling to justify spending $2 on the book.

When I got home and researched the bookplate, I was surprised to learn that it belonged to a somewhat well-known individual at the turn of the 20th century, Dr. Alfred Robert Louis Dohme, a Baltimore pharmacist and chemist of some renown.

            Alfred Robert Louis Dohme (1867-1952) was a chemist who founded the pharmaceutical company Sharpe and Dohme (later Merck, Sharpe and Dohme) with a special interest in pharmaceutical assaying.

Dohme was also passionate about art and music.  He was instrumental in the founding of the Baltimore Museum of Art, as well as being chairman of the Grand Opera Committee of Baltimore.

Dohme was married twice, with his first marriage resulting in the birth of six daughters.  When his wife died, he remarried in 1909.

Alfred Robert Louis Dohme’s bookplate is full of curious symbols and mysteries, including the designer, whose signature, ADOHME ’14, does not correspond to any known bookplate engravers. 

Lew suggested that perhaps the designer was Dr. Dohme’s sister, but after extensive research, I have another theory.

One of Dr. Dohme’s daughters, Adelyn Dohme Breeskin (1896-1986), was the first woman to direct a major American art museum.

The younger Dohme planned on being an artist and graduated from Boston’s School of Fine Arts, Crafts and Decorative Design in 1918.  After graduation, she took a job in the print department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, later returning to Baltimore to accept the position of curator of prints at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

In 1938, she was named general curator of the museum and built one of the finest works on paper collections in the country.  In 1947, Adelyn Dohme was named director of the Baltimore Museum of Art. 

So it is reasonable to conclude that Adelyn Dohme  (ADOHME ‘14) was the artist and designer of her father’s intriguing bookplate.  In 1914, the aspiring artist would have been 18 years old.

Notes From Lew  

I want to thank Michele for submitting this article.You, my readers are encouraged to submit articles for inclusion in the blog.If English is not your primary language I can assist you with the editing.. Send a brief outline of your proposed article to      Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

Some Recent additions to my collection

Symbol: Maxim "Knowledge Empowers Struggle". 

Design by 

Albert Hahn, Jr.,

 Sam DeWolff was a leader of the Zionist faction of the social democratic movement. 

 Salomon(Sam)  deWolff

The  information about this bookplate was sent by fellow collector Michael Kunze

The HQ of the  Prussian Association of Jewish Communities   (Preussischer Landesverband Jüdischer Gemeinden ) was located at  Kantstr. 158, Berlin,  and officially founded in  1922 

"Wanderbücherei" (book mobile / mobile library) may mean either a library mounted on a truck or it was moved by a truck to be stationed somewhere for a limited time

 This library picture was made in 1935

Mystery Bookplates

Can you assist me in identifying the owner's or

 artist's of these bookplates ?

If you have a mystery bookplate

Please send a scan to 

Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

8/23/2014 It always amazes me when   questions are answered at lightning speed. Fellow collector Jacques Laget found a book description

which contained the following information:

https://www.oakknoll.com/pages/books/63627/century-memorials-1943

Printed for the Century Club by D.B. Updike at the Merrymount Press, Boston (Smith 957). Brief eulogies of club members who died in 1943, including Steven Vincent Benet, Pierpont Morgan, and Lt. Tom La Farge, whose cutter foundered in an ice storm off the coast of Newfoundland while returning from a "difficult and very valuable work in the North Atlantic area."

See You Again Next Weekend

.

In Defense of Pigeons

 Members of the pigeon family have been maligned ,shot at, poisoned  eaten.and annihilated.
 Consider this my tribute to some feathered friends..

 Pigeon family  bookplates, ephemera, and things that strike my fancy.

Wendell M.Levi wrote The Encyclopedia of Pigeon Breeds  in 1965 .

The Dodo  was a member of the Pigeon family It is now extinct. Ralfe Whistler is a Dodo bird collector.
For images from his collection follow this link:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-24525693

Verna Faber designed this bookplate for Hettie Gray Baker.

CW Refers to Carolyn Wells

Wood engraved Christmas card from Andy English -2007

My favorite Pigeon quotation-

Some days you're the Pigeon .Some days you're the statue

A Pigeon Rubber Stamp

https://www.etsy.com/listing/61391353/pigeon-post-pigeon-gram-from-the-desk-of?ref=sr_gallery_7&ga_search_query=pigeon+bookplate&ga_search_type

A Pigeon book to make you laugh and cry.

I am about half way through this delightful book. 

In case you are wondering it is the reason I wrote this posting

See you next week.

New Addition to my Collection and Photo Bookplates

I recently obtained this bookplate on Ebay.

It complimented the two Lewis Carroll Room plates I already had

In an effort to obtain more information I discovered that the Cleveland Public Library had digitized  their
bookplates and many of them were done by students.
Here is the link.

http://cdm16014.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/collection/p4014coll13/searchterm/bookplates/field/subjec/mode/all/conn/and

The artist(s) who did the three plates from the Lewis Carroll Reference room were not indicated so I dug deeper and found this site relating to WPA artists

http://library.case.edu/ksl/collections/special/wpa/artists/kucharyson_etal.html

It put me in the right direction but more research is needed because the  artist's for the three bookplates are listed as a group.

WPA Artists: Paul Kucharyson, Edward C. Haill and Kalman Kubinyi

PHOTO BOOKPLATES

In the 1930's and 40's there was some faddish use of photographic bookplates.The style did not last very long but I have unearthed a few.I know nothing about the owners. If you have any similar plates send me a scan and they will be added to this posting.

Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

I've scanned my paper version of George Eastman's bookplate. Many years ago I had the older photographic version of this plate but I must have traded it for something else.

Here is some additional information about Mr. Eastman's bookplate :"When the cocktail hour came into vogue in the 1920's, Eastman changed his formal reception room into a ''little library.'' Intimately scaled and elegant with Wedgwood green walls and columned white marble fireplace, the room has a comfortable wing chair near the fireplace just as it was when Eastman posed (with back to camera) for his bookplate. He catalogued his books, identifying each by section and shelf. Alongside classics by Shakespeare, Longfellow, Kipling and Dickens, volumes that have Eastman's original bookplate include ''Darwinism'' and ''Reveries of a Bachelor.''
REF-  http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/18/travel/splendor-restored-at-eastman-house.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's another new addition to my theatrical bookplate collection .Celebrity bookplates are always on my want list and I've never seen this one before.

See you again next week.

Bookplate Odds and Ends

Here is a link to a well written, competently researched and thoroughly enjoyable ephemera blog

http://ephemeraresources.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/sarah-sophia-banks-collecting-ephemera.html

                                                           British Museum. Prints and Drawings. C.1-193-219

Click on image to enlarge

                                                                        
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Generally speaking , there is not strong interest in the copper or steel engravers plates used to create a bookplate. There are always exceptions.. Fellow collector Anthony Pincott sent me this link about
 the Christies sale of  an 18th century copper plate engraved by Nathaniel Hurd for Francis Dana
( Allen # 201).Follow the link if you are curious about the sale price.

http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/an-engraved-copper-bookplate-signed-by-nathaniel-5764101-details.aspx

In my own collection I have 13 Aluminum plates used by Sara Eugenia Blake. The plates were owned by Mary Alice Ercolini.and eventually became part of Earl Heims collection*. When he died his collection was sold to a gallery in Portland Oregon and I purchased the plates from them. Some day someone will write a long overdue book about Sara Eugenia Blake and hopefully I will be able to loan the plates to the author..

*Earl Heims was a Rockwell Kent collector and he used a Kent image on his bookplate
,I currently have a duplicate for possible exchange.

Fellow collector/dealer Tom Boss sent this mystery bookplate for identification.It is possible the owner's name was cut off. This is one of those bookplates which can drive one bonkers.I know I've seen it before and I have a lingering feeling it is in my collection or I bid on it in the past. Maybe one of you can help Tom.
Send your input to
Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

Speedy response from Anthony Pincott

Your bookplate queried by Tom Boss is that of Abram P Longbottom  Allen #515.

See you again next Sunday