This Week In Bookplates 1/22/2012

I received the following e mail from Michele Behan

"Apparently, I've been a little lax in keeping up with your blog, because I just now noticed a post you made on June 15, 2011 asking for help with mystery bookplate artists.  I don't know how I missed that post the first time around.

Anyway, in that post, you showed a bookplate for Gertrude Brown signed by a mystery artist named J.K. 

After I enlarged the image, I noticed that the initials were made on opposite sides of the bookplate, with the J to the left of the nameplate and the K to the right of the nameplate.

That is the same style of signing and the same initials (J.K.) as on my Ellis Parker Butler bookplate:"

It is very hard to see the initials .without a magnifying glass.
The J is to the right and beneath the left  circle
The K is to the left and beneath the right circle

PBS station KCET is doing an excellent three part blog about Olive Percival.It is very informative.

Here is the opening paragraph followed by links to the first two postings.

"Who is Olive Percival? An author? A gardener? A toy maker? An advocate for suffrage, animals and trees? A collector of Japanese art? An insurance clerk? A photographer? A bibliophile? A designer of paper dolls? A curator of bookplates? She was all of these and more. UCLA librarian Lawrence Clark Powell likened her to a modern-day Emily Dickinson, while writer Hildegard Flanner positioned her as "a prominent figure in Southern California." Assembling a list of Percival's attributes runs the risk of omitting key details about this multifaceted personality. Yet it is a risk worth taking to ensure her place among the respected artists of the Arroyo."

Olive Percival in her garden

http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/landofsunshine/highland-park/who-is-olive-percival.html 

http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/landofsunshine/highland-park/olive-percival-artist-in-the-arroyo.html

This tissue paper bookplate from my own collection was done by Olive Percival for Clare Ryan. 

Clare Ryan( Talbot) later wrote Historic California in Bookplates.

The photo below  is of Clare Ryan Talbot (age 74) taken during the Jack London Square book show.

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Mystery Bookplate

Does anyone out there know anything about this bookplate ?

It is American, probably early 19th century and the owner's name looks like Gandy.

Your help is always appreciated.

Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

See You Next Week.

Olive Percival plus A Few More Hamill Plates

Here are two more Hamill plates in addition to the ones posted last week. The Ariel plate is tiny


1 inch wide by 1 1/2 inches high. Does anyone out there know who designed it ?

Olive Percival was among other things a bookplate collector and a bookplate designer who lived in California. Quite honestly , I never knew much about her until I recently purchased a Christmas Card she designed in 1920. It amused me so I did some research.

Jim Lewis reminded me that the 1995 Yearbook of The American Society had an excellent article about Olive Percival written by Audrey Arellanes.

Here is a link which outlines her many interests.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Percival

Papermania is coming up again in about two weeks.It is one of the best east coast ephemera shows and well worth the trip to Hartford Conn.

Here is a link:

http://www.papermaniaplus.com/

Here is a link to another new bookplate blog :

http://exlibriscollection.blogspot.com/

One last thing before I sign off. Here is a way to fine tune Google so that your bookplate research is much more efficient. Google has a subset called Google books. If you put E.D. French into Google you find out he was in the make up department for Terminator 2 , a location scout, and is listed in Linkedin. If you do the same search in Google books you find reference to his participation in a loan exhibit of bookplates held in Boston.

See you next week.