Unidentified Bookplates

Evey once and a while I check to see how this blog is growing and here is an overview.On average, one hundred people visit the site everyday. That number has been fairly constant. Most of the hits come from Google searches plus links from related websites and blogs. In addition, seventy people subscribe via Feed Burner and their competitors.That is the number that impresses me because it has grown so rapidly.The greatest percentage of viewers are from the U.S. followed by the U. K. and Canada.

I have accumulated a good many bookplates that remain unidentified even though the artist's signatures are visible. If you recognize any of these please let me hear from you. If you also have unknown items in your collection send me a scan and I will try to include them in a future posting. With the power of the Internet this could be of great value in speeding up the identification of puzzling bookplates.

The plate is for Wilfrid M.Langdon

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE

http://www.collectorsweekly.com/hall-of-fame/

The link above will take you to an excellent site to see what people are collecting in addition to bookplates. It is well researched and very enjoyable.

See you next week.

Harold Berliner /Claude Lovat Fraser

An illustration from The Bookplate Designs Of Claud Lovat Fraser by Brian North Lee , printed by Harold Berliner

One of the joys of this strange hobby is exchanging duplicates with complete strangers who become "bookplate friends" . I received these plates from Harold Berliner , a retired lawyer and an accomplished printer. His bookplates were designed over forty years ago by Clemens Schmidt. The symbols on both reflect his interest in Christianity, bookmaking and the law.

After obtaining a copy of his private press book The Bookplate Designs Of Claud Lovat Fraser

I wrote to him and asked for a brief biography. Here is what he sent:

"A short life story. I have printed since age 16, in San Francisco. 1944-45 printed at Notre Dame where I graduated from Law School. From 1946 onward I printed in Nevada City. From 1946 to about 3 years ago, practiced law from Nevada City including 17 years as Nevada County District Attorney. My interests were consumer protection and the environment, mostly dealing with subdivided lands. At nearly 86, slowing down in printing, but will begin selling again in a month or so. The Lovatt Fraser book at $57 is not subject to discount and is available. My web site is

http://www.haroldberlinerpress.com/

I have a Chandler & Price open press, a large (about 20 x 35) Heidelberg and a few windmills, all in good working condition. "

The book is a delight and I am glad to have a copy in my library.

I picked up two interesting bookplates this week .The Harold Wright Hack plate was designed by Margaret Neilson Armstrong (1867-1944) whose decorative book covers are highly collectible. The Youth's Companion Magazine plate has the initials FD which means the artist may have been Francis Delehanty .

Looking at links takes time so I usually try to include only one per week . I have seen so many good ones recently that I decided to list three of them with brief descriptions.

Charles Ellwood Jones began a project to catalog the bookplates of scholars in ancient studies and has updated it on a regular basis.

http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/

Larry T. Nix is a library buff and has written about the Antioch Bookplate Company and its founder Ernest Morgan
Http://libraryhistorybuff.blogspot.com

Chuck Whiting has a great blog about bookish ephemera.
http://bibliophemera.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-orleans-book-trade-labels.html

That's about all for now. See you next week.

Bookplate Ephemera/ Carl Anders Breitholtz

I am always intrigued by ephemeral items relating to bookplates and bookplate artists Many of these scans relate to J.W. Spenceley , one of the foremost engravers during the" golden age "of American bookplates

Etched By J.W. Spenceley- Click on images to enlarge.

This is the artwork drawn by Carl Anders Breitholtz for his families archive at the Royal Library in Stockholm. Mr. Breitholtz paints heraldic subjects and illustrations for several publications. He particularly likes to draw subjects which relate to imagination and fantasy.

His website on heraldry ( mainly in English ) is http://www.creativeheraldry.com/

This is a sketch for a bookplate by J.W. Spenceley.It was done on the blank side of a business card(shown below) for practitioners of occult therapeutics .

I was sorting through a recently acquired bookplate collection when I came upon this embossed label for Mrs. Christian R. Holmes Collection.It didn't look like a bookplate so I Googled Mrs.

Holmes and it appears she was an authority on Ancient Chinese bronzes. I am assuming these labels were numbered and affixed to the underside of the items in her collection.

This is the reverse side of the sketch foe Levi Eaton's bookplate

Newsworthy- This week in bookplates:

Wolfgang Rieger's latest bookplate catalog is up and running.Here is a link:

Http://www.antiquariat-rieger.de/neueexlibris.htm

There are two book shows in New York City this week. They both open on Friday April 3rd and I plan to attend both.

Here are the promoter's websites :

http://www.sanfordsmith.com/

http://www.flamingoeventz.com/

See you next week.

Eighteen Small Bookplates

Click On Images To Enlarge
Margaret Mc Causland- This is a hand colored universal bookplate .The artist Lucia Patton is a children's book illustrator and author.

Pat Lawlor was a book collector , author and journalist in New Zealand and Shibli Bagarag is a reference to character in The Shaving of Shagpat by George Meredith. I am not on firm ground with this assumption so please let me know if I am correct.

Margaret Williams- I know nothing about this bookplate but it is a delight to look at.


Let's face it , some Sunday mornings I have very little to say. That's why I like the collector profiles so much. It's a win -win situation you get seven days of fame and I do not have to write something when the creative juices are not flowing. If you want to participate send me a paragraph or two about yourself and your collection. A photograph would be helpful. If I make any minor revisions they will be sent to you before publishing. I am particularly interested in hearing from collectors in Europe , South America and Asia. Most of the profiles received so far have been from American collectors. Send your profiles to Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

I just took a book off the shelf called Design In Miniature by David Gentleman.It's about small things,coins, stamps, labels etc. which measure one or two inches across. A number of my favorite bookplates fall into this category. I know something about some of these bookplates and their artists and will try to fill in the blanks throughout the week. Stay Tuned.
In 2006 I wrote about some additional small bookplates. Here is a link:
Http://bookplatejunkie.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html

Monday Morning, 3/23- I have started to fill in some background information about some of the bookplate owners and the artists who created their plates.

Mary Hastings Bradley( 1882-1976) Her plate was designed by CK Berryman .
Mrs. Bradley was a writer and explorer who took her six year old daughter on an African safari. The daughter Alice B. Sheldon became a popular science fiction writer using the male name James Tiptree Jr,

E. Wilkinson- Reasonable assumption , he was a naturalist.

Brooklyn Edison Library- Artist's initials F.B. Done in the early 1900's

Click On Images To Enlarge

Rowe Wright - Was not able to find anything in initial Google search. There was an author listed with that name .The artist's cipher is distinctive so someone out there will probably recognize it.

John Gerard Heckscher ( 1837-1908) Plate engraved by Tiffany & Co. Mr. Heckscher had an extensive angling library and had several different bookplate by famous American engravers.

Katherine E. Derr-Artist E.T. Nelson . I bought this at the Kutztown extravaganza several years ago and have not found out anything yet about the owner or the artist. I thought it would be easy to find biographical information about the owner, especially with a street address and city listed on the bookplate but no luck so far.

Blank Book Labels

I picked up the floral Art Nouveau T L bookplate yesterday. It was in a French art book published in 1905 and bound by a binder in Sweden. Not much to go on. I have narrowed the field somewhat. It did not belong to Toulouse-Lautrec . Do any of you recognize it?



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Click On Images To Enlarge

Click On Images To Enlarge

Blankbook
A book consisting of clean or ruled leaves for writing or making entries, with printing limited to page headings and/or divisions Examples include diaries, albums, scrapbooks, guestbooks, sketchbooks, account books, minute books, log books, exercise books, etc. Because the information recorded in official blankbooks may be of permanent value, good-quality paper and durable bindings are generally used. A blankbook should open flat for ease of use. Also spelled blank book.

There must have been thousands of Blank Book manufacturers . They were printers , binders , booksellers, stationery stores and suppliers for the retailers and factories throughout the world.

Many of them pasted advertising labels on the inside front covers.

The collecting fungus from outer space that has infected my brain must have been responsible for my interest in these obscure items . I buy them whenever I can so if you have some for sale, I am an easy mark.

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Another Digitized Bookplate Collection

"Hello,I work for the University of British Columbia's Rare Books and Special Collections and we're digitizing our Thomas Murray bookplate collection at the moment. I love reading your blog. It has made me really curious about our holdings. We love getting feedback,especially if someone has a matching bookplate or more information for us. Take a look our what we have up so far Cheers! Eileen Hogan "

http://angel.library.ubc.ca/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/bookplate

That's about all for today. See you next week.

Rodgers Book Barn and Pope Pius X

Click On Images To Enlarge
There is a charming book store in Hillsdale, New York called Rodgers Book Barn

http://www.rodgersbookbarn.com/

About ten years ago I was told by a fellow collector that Mrs. Rodgers had acquired an enormous bookplate collection that had been built over a long career by a Manhattan bookseller who had retired in upstate New York.

Needless to say I was at their doorstep the very next day and what I found was spectacular. One item I acquired was a bookplate from the library of Pope Pius X.

At the time, my focus was on 18th century American bookplates so I made a trade with the late Brian North Lee whose focus was on royal bookplates. After his death the Lee collection was sold at auction in England. Brian had a distinctive way of displaying bookplates. He mounted them on graph paper. I mention this because several weeks ago the Pope's bookplate I had exchanged with Brian was offered on Ebay and I was the high bidder. So there you have a small slice of a papal pilgrimage , from Manhattan to Hillsdale, New York, to Philadelphia , to Barrowgate Road in Chiswick and back to Philadelphia.

See you next week.

Update 3/9/2009

If you plan to be in New York City this Friday or Saturday (3/14 -15) here is a link to an ephemera seminar that may interest you.

http://128.228.5.19/eventDetail.asp?EventId=21034

News & Events- 3/6/2009

Congratulations to Keith Scheid , the winner of the tattoo bookplate contest. His winning entry was:


"Exlibris The College Of Arms "



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New Digitized Bookplate Site



The Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut has begun to digitize their bookplate collection. It is an ambitious work in progress for which they deserve our collective appreciation.

There will be errors. They are to be expected.When I get the name of the project coordinator I will post it on the blog so he can be notified about corrections.


http://images.lib.uconn.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fgraphmat



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Bookplate News From Around the World

The International Federation Of Exlibris Societies (F.I.S.A.E.) maintains an excellent site which is worth your time. Here is a link:

http://www.fisae.org/

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Book sales In Your Backyard

I look forward to receiving this information every week and plan my itinerary accordingly.

http://www.booksalefinder.com/

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Calendar Of Book Shows & Auctions From Fine Books Magazine

http://www.finebooksmagazine.com/calendar/

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Collector Profile,Richard Schimmelpfeng

My Background: I’m a Midwesterner, from the Chicago area. I attended Lake Forest College and the University of Illinois and then took a M.S. degree in Library Science from Columbia University. I worked at Washington University in St. Louis for ten years, then came to the University of Connecticut in Storrs in 1965, where I started the Rare Books and Special Collections Dept. in the Library. I retired in 1992 and have since volunteered as a cataloger in the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

How I Started Collecting Bookplates: I taught the history of printing and rare books in addition to my regular job and in 1971 realized what a delight bookplates are. I contacted Audrey Arellanes who was editor for the ASBCD and began my connection with bookplates. It was Audrey who got me to index the society publications. My first real collection of bookplates was acquired from Mary Alice Ercolini, whom I knew, and that led to exchanges and purchases from other collectors here and abroad. My collection now contains many many thousands of exlibris, mostly from the 1880’s to the present.

What I Collect: My collecting interests are primarily pictorial plates in all media, although I admire wood engraving and etching. The current bookplates created in color etchings from Eastern European artists are particularly admired and I collect the work of E.D. French, the Spenceleys, A.N. Macdonald, W.F. Hopson, Sherborn, and the later European artists Reuter, Reitsma Valenca, Vannuccini, Bulder, Estiarte and many many more. The work of Australian and New Zealand artists is another interest and I have a major collection them. I have a reference collection of more than 600 titles as well as periodicals. The arrangement of my bookplates is by artist.
In addition to exlibris I collect modern paperweights, books on calligraphy, examples of fine printing from private presses, books on fables, and the writings of Terry Pratchett.

Elizabeth Watson Diamond was a remarkable collector. She commissioned many artists to create bookplates for her library.These are two outstanding examples.The horse head was done by Paul Landacre in 1939. It is illustrated on P.42 in The Golden Era of American Bookplate Design by William E. and Darlene J. Butler. Dr. Butler states (and I agree ) that "This is a bookplate which can readily be classified as a print."

The punning bookplate was done in the early 1940s by Kálmán Kubinyi of Cleveland Ohio .

I have listed these two items on Ebay and if you are an impulse buyer here is a link:

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZbookplatemavenQQfrppZ50QQfsopZ32QQfsooZ2QQrdZ0 On March 2nd I will post the winner of the tattoo bookplate contest. It is now Saturday evening (7:30 P.M. E.S.T.) so if you get off your butt there is still time to submit your entry. Scroll down to my January 31st posting for all the details.

3/2/2009 Update. The winner is Keith Scheid.

His winning entry is: "The College Of Arms"

Collector Profile John Titford /A Pair Of Hearts

Occupation : I am a professional genealogist * and writer who lives in Derbyshire, England.

A sound working knowledge of heraldry has helped me in my bookplate quest.

My wife Heather and I spend many happy hours around the kitchen table, using copies of Papworth's Ordinary and other printed, manuscript and Internet sources in an attempt to identify anonymous heraldic bookplates.

Collecting Interest : I am a passionate and enthusiastic collector of the bookplates of the

American designer E D French

and am always keen to add plates or related ephemera to my EDF collection.

Other artists of interest include Americans (J W Spenceley, S L Smith, A N MacDonald) and Brits (C W Sherborn, G W Eve).

* After John submitted his profile I asked him to add a brief description of the ways he can assist bookplate collectors. The following is his response:

I can help you Identify your mystery plates and compile biographies of their owners! I am happy to undertake consultancy work in matters concerning British heraldry and genealogy. Hourly charges are UK£40.00, and queries should be addressed to J.Titford@zen.co.uk

Please tell me all you know about each bookplate so far, and attach a scan of the plate(s) in question.

Dr. Norman Shaftel (1915-1998) was a graduate of The University of Cincinnati School of Medicine. He was a medical historian and a book collector. His wood engraved bookplate was designed by Ernest Huber

I am of the opinion this is a double punning plate for two reasons : The shield with the heart does not appear in my reference book (Fairbairn's Crests) so I have to assume it was made up by Rev. Hart to be a pun. The crudely drawn deer (hart) might also have been an additional pun.

Rev. Hart lived in Richmond Virginia in the early 1800's so this is probably one of the earliest American punning plates.

Mr. Joseph McMillan, The director of research at The American Heraldry Society was kind enough to respond to my inquiry about the Hart plate as follows:

"You wouldn't find the shield with the hearts in Fairbairn's Crests because it isn't a crest. The crest is the hart (deer) standing on top of the helmet. These arms are given in Bolton's American Armory, citing this bookplate as the source. They are clearly punning, or what are called "canting" arms, both as to the shield and as to the crest, although that doesn't mean the Rev. Mr. Hart originated them himself, since such puns are one of the most common sources of armorial design going back centuries.To determine whether the arms are of British or Irish origin or were devised and adopted unilaterally would require some digging in armorials, not collections of crest. The most useful of these is Papworth's Alphabetical Dictionary of Coats of Arms Belonging to Families in Great Britain, known as Papworth's Ordinary because it is arranged by the principal charge on the field. Papworth is available through Google Books, and it doesn't include these arms. That means they probably wouldn't be in Burke's General Armorial, either, since Papworth is basically an index to Burke. See our pages on England and Scotland on researching ancestral arms, http://americanheraldry.org/pages/index.php?n=Main.Ancestral for the other English and Scottish references that are available. Unfortunately I haven't done Ireland yet, but contacting the Office of the Chief Herald of Ireland http://www.nli.ie/en/services-heraldry.aspx may yield information as to whether the arms appear in the Irish records."

New Bookplate Exhibit

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I received this email earlier in the week and thought some of you might wish to participate.

"Dear Mr. Lewis Jaffe,
Thank you kindly for your interest in our bookplate project. I am co-curating with Niki Litts of the Kinston Arts Center and Professor Sarah Faris (Virginia Commonwealth University).
We have about 15 artists committed at this time and are taking submissions in an ongoing process.
Thanks kindly for your interest! Any assistance you might offer would be most appreciated.
- Charles Philip Brooks
Call to Artists / Printmakers / Works on Paper - "Ex Libris" Collaboration This is an ongoing call for printmakers and artists who make drawings or other works on paper!
A Collaborative exhibition of Ex Libris - (bookplate designs). This exhibition will be collaborative - with artists paying their own shipping and framing costs. We do have several venues expressing interest in hosting, including the Kinston Art Center in North Carolina. In addition, we are planning to document this exhibition in catalogue form. All styles and printmaking techniques will be considered - Although we do confess a preference for woodcut, linocut, etching, drawing and various traditional printmaking techniques.
Please feel free to get in touch if interested - Designs may be sent to: "A Gray Day Fine Art"- re: Ex Libris 122 North Church Street Rocky Mount, NC 27804 or email scrimshawprojects@gmail.com

(Please put "Ex Libris" in your subject line.)"

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See you next week .

Collector Profile Rima Brickus/ A Bunch of Smiths

The First Plate Purchased by Rima Brickus from Tom Boss

Background: I came to America after WWII with my parents. They were political refugees who had fled Stalin's genocide of Lithuanians and other nationalities under the subjugation of Communist Russia. I grew up in Cambridge MA in 1950's and 1960's America, but lived in a household that maintained the sensibilities of 1930's Europe. Because Cambridge was an academic town, exposure to fine libraries and bookstores led to my appreciation of antiquarian books and thus bookplates.

Interests: I have a master's degree in Library Science, but most of my professional career was spent as an owner/broker of a successful real estate firm specializing in the sale of Victorian houses. I am interested in people, books, art, and architecture. I am drawn to bookplates because they are the perfect combination of fine graphic art and “people stories”.
My First Bookplate: I bought my first bookplate from Tom Boss many years ago at an international art show in Boston. It was engraved by Sidney Lawton Smith for Isabel and Larz Anderson and depicted the Italian garden of their turn-of the century estate in Brookline, MA . As a child I had had free run of the 64-acre property which by then was a public park. The grounds included an abandoned mansion, the remnants of a magnificent Italian garden, Greek and Roman statuary, and a beautiful tempietto set on the bank of a man-made pond with a foot-bridge.

My Collection: Because of my heritage, I have a good collection of modern Lithuanian bookplates, but my preference now is for early American bookplates. I am partial to the work of E.D. French, Sidney Lawton Smith and A.N. Macdonald. My goal is to complete my E.D. French collection and to acquire more 18th century American bookplates.

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This large (4 1/4 inches wide by 6 inches high ) bookplate was engraved by Thomas Johnston around 1740 for William Peartree Smith of New York (Allen # 808). It is an extremely rare .

Sidney Lawton Smith was one of America's finest pictorial bookplate engravers, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. If you want to learn more about him I suggest the following book : Sidney Lawton Smith Designer, Etcher, Engraver with Extracts from his Diary and a Check-List of his Bookplates published 1931 by Charles E. Goodspeed & Co.

Click on images to enlarge and see more details.

I am focusing on Smith images today , some were engraved by Sidney Lawton Smith and some are for owners named Smith. How can you resist not wanting to know more about someone named Eugenia Pocahontas Smith . From a cursory Google search it seems her maiden name was Barber and she married a Professor Sidney Irving Smith.I am assuming she was in some way a descendant of Pocahontas. The artist is unknown to me and by clicking on the image you can enlarge his (her) cipher .

The bookplate contest is still running. Scroll down to my January 31st posting for further information. It will be difficult to choose a winner because the submissions , so far, are excellent.

See you next week.

Collector Profile,Nina Allen/More Punning Bookplates

Woodcut by Andy English



Occupation: I teach American literature at Suffolk University in Boston, and so it’s no surprise that both of my personal bookplates reference literary works. The one shown here is a wood engraving designed by Andy English. The quote, “All goes onward and outward,” is from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” One day I may write an article about the slouch hat in American literature, but in the meantime I’ve put the hat in my bookplate because it became Whitman’s signature piece from the moment Samuel Hollyer engraved his portrait for the frontis of the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855). Hollyer also designed and engraved numerous bookplates, several of which are in my collection.

Collecting Interests: My collecting interests are pretty much all over the map. One of my favorite bookplates is a 1925 wood engraving designed by the New Zealand printmaker Stephen Champ for Jane Mander, who was a New Zealand novelist.



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More Punning Bookplates-Since I wrote about punning bookplates several weeks ago, a few more have been unearthed.


Dr. A.W. Clark uses a distinctive cipher which is hidden in the cliff on the punning plate for Helen and George Beach.









The Steele plate was done by Fred Thompson

I do not know who did the Weed plate.Personally, I like Thistles and have never thought of them as weeds.

The Muriel Clark Corby plate was done by John Berryman

Plate For Austin Jenkins Lily

The George F. Baer plate was done by Will Jordan

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Odds and Ends

The bookplate contest is alive and well. See last weeks posting for all the details and send in your entry before it's too late.

I listed 25 bookplates on Ebay . Here is a link:

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZbookplatemavenQQfrppZ50QQfsopZ32QQfsooZ2QQrdZ0