Magician's Bookplates

The one shown above is one of my favorites.

http://www.miraclefactory.net/mpt/view.php?type=mc&id=85

The link shown above contains an excellent checklist of magician's bookplates.

I am using a new browser (Fire Fox 4) and some links are not automatically activated.I have to confer with my seven year old grandson to get   this straightened out.    In the meantime, you can copy and paste it.

 The plate for Dunninger was done by Mahlon Blaine

 Everyone knows this guy.

 Mr. Zufall like Dunninger was a psychic entertainer.

 I prefer the bookplates with striking images and July 4th colors.

In the 1920's and 30's many Hollywood celebrities used bookplates.The same is true of magicians and magic book collectors..I have scanned a few of my favorites and would welcome additional scans which will be added to this posting.. Send the scans to Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

I will be in New York City on Friday April 8th attending two book shows.If you plan to be in the city that day and have bookplates for sale or trade I would love to hear from you.
See you next Sunday

If memory serves me right I believe the plate shown above was the first magician's plate I ever got.

The Li-Chung-Soo plate is  in the Cory Shull collection..

Hopefully , I will find one to add to my own collection

New Bookplate by Daniel Mitsui

On Sunday I will write about the bookplates of Magicians so be sure to tune in.
Daniel Mitsui just completed this bookplate for a client.

The words along the edges are select verses from the famous Jewish Prayer Shema Yisrael, Hear Oh Israel. The 4 letters on the 4 corners are the 4 letters traditionally placed on the 4 sides of a dreidel, which stand for Nes Gadol Haya Po, a great miracle happened here.

See you on Sunday.

Punning and Rebus Bookplates

The bell punning bookplates are like tribbles . They keep breeding until they take over your album.
I am not sure when I started collecting punning and rebus bookplates. It just sort of happened.I had one or two near each other in an album and they started reproducing . Gloria Swanson's rebus plate is one of the most innovative ones I own.
Hettie Gray Baker worked in Hollywood for most of her adult life and built a world class collection of celebrity bookplates.The collection is at the Hartford(Conn.) Athenaeum and well worth a visit
George H. Bell was the Governor of New Hampshire
Mr. Bookman's bookplate is illustrated in The Art of the Bookplate by James Keenan
Robert O. Foote's plate was designed by Ruth Saunders




Most of the punning and rebus plates in my collection are in the English language.If you have the time and are so inclined please send me scans of examples in other languages and I will add them to this posting.
Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com
By the way, I have added a bookplate search engine to the blog .It is located on the upper left side and will enable you to find information I previously wrote about. It always amuses me when I do a search about an artist or owner and come up with something I wrote about and had completely forgotten. See you next week.

Saturday Night Special

At a moment in history when civility and stability are being undermined by stupidity and avarice it is nice to read something inspiring.

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~traister/schrtalk.html

Tomorrow , I will be writing about punning and Rebus bookplates

The Sarah B. Lattimer Collection

The Sarah B. Lattimore collection arrived this week . It included about thirty duplicates by Frederick Spenceley and an equal number of duplicates by E.D. French .

It was not a large collection ( about 174 plates) but it contained many unusual items. I would like to focus on a few of the mystery plates in the collection in case one of you knows something about them and can help me.
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE
Among the thirty Frederick Spenceley duplicates these are two of my favorites.Bird & Son was founded in 1795 and Spenceley engraved this plate for them in 1912. The company, now called The Bird Corporation is still in business today. Here is a link about their history:
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Bird-Corporation-Company-History.html

The Krotona Institute of Theosophy plate was engraved in 1915. They are sill active today although at a different location.

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

Do any of you know who did these two bookplates using Bewick images. Based on my initial Google search of the owner's names I suspect William H Vodrey( 1872- 1954) was a prominent resident of Beaver Valley , Ohio and Thomas L. Leeming was a Brooklyn Architect.

This printed plate for Marshall Rutgers Kernochan was the highlight of the collection .It appears to be a photgraphic image by Edward Steichen.

The plate for Tony Kales is another one of the mysteries. Fellow collector Richard Schimmelpfeng determined that he was a child movie star who appeared in some of the Our Gang films. All the Walt Disney plates I have previously seen were " universal" packaged items. This one appears to have been custom designed for Mr. Kales. Was the plate done for him by Walt Disney or did he kidnap Mickey and Minnie and Pluto ?

A treasure trove of 74 books from the library of Thomas Jefferson was recently discovered.

Will wonders never cease?

President Jefferson did not use a bookplate. He used a secret code in the signature.

Follow the link for more information.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41735037/ns/today-books/

The American Antiquarian Society has done an excellent job of digitizing Paul Revere documents. including bookplates. Here is a link:

http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Inventories/Revere/bookplates.htm

As I get further information about the mystery plates I will update this posting.

See you next Sunday

This Week in Bookplates 3/13/2011

Fellow Collector Mark Griffin sent me two lovely bookplates and I asked him to write about them. This was his response:

"As you know, the finial bookplate was produced by Ashley Benham and the swimmer bookplate was produced by Peter Waddell. Here is a little information about each bookplate.

Finial Bookplate

The finial is located atop the historic Christian Heurich Mansion located just south of Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. I see this finial every day because the Mansion is located directly across the street from my office. The Mansion was built in the late 1890’s by Christian Heurich, our local beer baron. Mr. Heurich was afraid of fire because his first brewery burned to the ground at great financial loss to him. So the Heurich Mansion was the first “fire-proof” building constructed in DC. It has concrete floors and a steel superstructure. The exterior is brick and stone. Mr. Heurich topped the Mansion’s tower with a “salamander” finial. A salamander is supposed to ward off fire. The story is that the salamander is usually the only animal to survive forest fires. The Mansion was used by the Heurich family until 1955 when it was given to the Historical Society of Washington, DC. I served the Society at various times over a period of about 25 years as Curator, General Counsel and finally as President. The Historical Society subsequently moved to larger quarters and the Mansion was acquired by The Heurich House Foundation. I was Chairman of this Foundation for a few years before I was allowed to finally go back to my preferred position admiring the Mansion from afar through my office window.

The Swimmer Bookplate

I am a swimmer. I went to Georgetown University and I have some particular history with the Healy Building which is the building on the hill shown in this image. The swimmer is supposed to be me as a young man swimming in the Potomac River in front of the GU Boathouse and looking up at the spires of the Healy Building on Georgetown's main campus. The Healy Building has a large clock tower. When I was a freshman, a friend and I managed to steal the hands of the clock. We put them in a long flower box and sent them to the new Dean of Discipline with a note that said: "From the Freshman Class, always willing to give you a hand". The Dean, a Jesuit priest, thought the hands were maces, the medieval sign of authority. He had them mounted on his office wall with our note. He was not pleased when one of the members of the engineering staff subsequently asked him why he had the missing hands from the clock on his office wall. An investigation ensued but I was never caught, thank goodness. All of this was, of course, perfect training for my later life as a Washington lawyer."

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Here is a link about a $543,000 book and art swindle . The sucker was a hedge fund.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/03/10/34803.htm

I figure this hedge fund will need more than a big winning streak to overcome this kind of bad publicity.

Two really big book shows are coming to New York City in early April. I plan to attend both .

Here are the links:

http://www.sanfordsmith.com/

http://www.flamingoeventz.com/

The Sarah B. Lattimore bookplate collection was up for sale and I purchased it.

If all goes according to schedule I will write about it next week.

See you then.

The Washington D.C. Book Show

I purchased two copies of the Will Gilliland Jun.bookplate at the Washington Book Show (one for my collection and one to trade). I suspect it is American but need to do much more research. The family name Gilliland appears in several Google searches but the most likely candidates are from New York State. If you know something about the plate please let me hear from you.
Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

One of the areas I focus on are bookplates from the libraries of famous people. I recently purchased this bookplate used by the Jazz legend Benny Carter (1907-2003).
Here is a link with biographical information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Carter

It is interesting to see how the way we use words changes over time. The rubber stamp on a bookplate from The Library of the Philadelphia Hospital indicates it is from The Insane Department. I have another bookplate which I can't locate right now which is from The Widows
and Old Men's Home.

Here is another example. Nowadays, the word cheap more often than not has a negative connotation like in cheapskate. In the mid 1800's it was something to promote in your advertising.

It seemed to me that many dealers at the Washington Book Show were actively selling.

We may be getting out of the economic slump. Books , art and antiques are leading indicators. If their sales are increasing that is a good omen. I did well at the show. Once every decade you hit a perfect storm and I came home with ten eighteenth century American bookplates.

Right now I am playing catch-up ,having been away for several days so this is a short posting.

See you next Sunday.

This Week In Bookplates 2/27/2010

Later this week I week I will be in Washington D. C. for 36th annual Washington Antiquarian Book Fair. While there I also want to see this exhibit at the German Ambassador's Residence:
http://leobaeckinstitute.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/the-art-of-the-book-at-the-german-ambassadors-residence/

Here is a link with information about the Washington Book Fair:

www.wabf.com

www.antiquariat-rieger.de/neueexlibris.htm Mrs. Lukacs was probably an English teacher. Her plate was on Dr. Rieger's monthly List.

Here is a link:

www.antiquariat-rieger.de/neueexlibris.htm

This plate was sent to me earlier this week. It is unusual , amusing and not soon forgotten.
For those of you planning a bookish trip to England here is an excellent site :

http://www.inprint.co.uk/thebookguide/fairs/index.php

If you are in the Washington , Virginia area and have bookplates for sale or exchange please contact me Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

See you next Sunday.

Five Years and Still Going Strong

Ernest G.Vielehr was an American painter about whom I have not found any biographical information. It is my assumption he designed this bookplate for Ernest Byfield who was a Chicago hotel owner . So what we have right now are assumptions and speculation. It's a start anyhow. I purchased this plate from Tom Boss Tgboss@gmail.com He has other bookplates for sale by this artist.

2/21/2011-Before the ink had a chance to dry, Suzanne sent me the following biographical information about Ernest George Vielehr. Thank you Suzanne.

Ernest George Vielehr
Born 23 July 1891 or 23 July 1894 in Rochester, NY (he reports different dates on the WW I and WWII )
Draft Registrations)
In 1917 worked for the Commercial Color Type Co., 401 South Clinton St., Chicago, IL
and lived at 9763 Beverly, Chicago, IL; he listed is occupation as “artist”

He was of medium height, stout build and had blue eyes and light brown hair.

He married Anna M. O’Hara on 31 March 1916 in Lake County, Indiana

In 1942 he lived at 7840 Elmgrove Drive, Elmwood Park, Cook Co., IL, and he was employed by
Andrew Wallach Studios, 205 W. Wacker, Chicago, Cook, IL

He is listed in Who Was Who in American Art: 400 Years of Artists in America, Second Edition,
three volumes, edited by Peter Hastings Falk, Madison, CT, published by Sound View Press, 1999

Jennifer Kennard Kennardz@comcast.net

has a blog about typography, books and printmaking and would like some assistance in learning who designed some Czech bookplates. Here is a link to her blog:

http://letterology.blogspot.com/2011/02/czech-bookplates.html?showComment=1297510490043#c4880789786642494112

About two years ago (see link below) I wrote about a lovely bookplate designed by Cleonike Damianakes (Wilkins) whose pen name is Cleon.Yesterday I found another bookplate she designed.This one was done for Max and Jean Meyer.

http://bookplatejunkie.blogspot.com/2009/10/search-for-cleon.html

January 2011 was the beginning of my fifth year as a blogger . Here are some readership numbers for my blog (from Sitemeter) . The percentage of U.S. viewers is down slightly and worldwide viewers have increased . China never shows up in these statistics but I know I have many readers on the Chinese mainland. I assume this has to do with Chinese Internet restrictions. On average I get 95 viewers each day and many of them come from Google searches. In addition, I have about 185 weekly subscribers on Feedburner plus 79 Google followers.

Looking forward , I would like to make this a more collaborative project with more guest writers and more collector profiles . Submissions should be sent to bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

Globe-Wernicke Bookplates by Michele Behan

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE

I first encountered Globe-Wernicke bookplates on eBay. As both a postcard and bookplate collector, I found their advertising postcards fascinating. Each over sized Globe-Wernicke postcard included a detachable section at the top to request samples of bookplates, along with a copy of a booklet titled “The World’s Best Books.”
The bottom of each postcard included two perforated bookplates, some in black and white and some in color, to be pasted in books, with Globe-Wernicke advertising printed on the back. Obviously, the uncut examples I acquired on eBay had never actually been used as bookplates.
Once Globe-Wernicke received a postcard back from an interested customer, they would send out a standard form letter, including the advertised booklet plus a small supply of bookplates. They would then offer to sell more bookplates at the rate of 75 cents per thousand, 50 cents per five hundred or 15 cents per hundred.

The letter would then go on to state, “What we are particularly interested in, is furnishing you with Globe-Wernicke Sectional Bookcases to house your library...”
A website chronicling postcards of Cincinnati businesses has identified 12 separate Globe-Wernicke bookplate designs.
http://www.cincinnativiews.net/Factories%20suburbs.htm
I have four of their designs in my own collection. Surprisingly, while an artist’s signature on a bookplate is generally considered to be a hallmark separating a commissioned bookplate from the usual, anonymously designed, universal bookplate, I did find an artist’s signature on one of the Globe-Wernicke bookplates.
The striking design of a proud sailing ship on choppy waters is signed H.L. Bridwell in tiny lettering on the inner frame surrounding the artwork. Below his name, the artist has added this motto:
Like argosies of old, seek treasure ~ but go a’voyaging in books.
H.L. Bridwell is Harry Loud Bridwell (1861-1930), a local Cincinnati artist and member of the Cincinnati Art Club who became partially paralyzed and taught himself to use his left hand. He did the decorations for the Grand Opera House, after the old theater burned down in 1901.
He also did magazine illustration, including a full page of boats in St. Nicholas Magazine for October 1889 and interior artwork for the same magazine’s November 1890 issue.

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I want to thank Michele Behan for submitting this article. Submissions from readers are always encouraged. Send me an email if you wish to participate by writing about some aspect of bookplate or ephemera collecting. Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

On February 3rd Heraldry Today featured the bookplate of Sir Ian Gilmour

http://heraldryonline.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/sir-ian-gilmour-bt-%E2%80%93-bookplate/

More Dogs on bookplates:

http://bookplate-jvarnoso.blogspot.com/2007/06/dogs-in-ex-libris.html

On February 7th Passion For Pipes included a bookplate which was of no particular interest but

the story about Alfred Dunhill was very enjoyable.

Is it my imagination or does the profile picture of Alfred Dunhill bear an uncanny resemblance to a well known bookseller in Salem, Mass.?

http://www.apassionforpipes.com/neills-blog/2011/2/7/dunhill-by-dunhill-for-dunhill.html

See you next Sunday.

Puppy Bowl, Bookplates with Dogs (and Cats)

Maurice Sendak's bookplate features Jennie his Sealyham Terrier who was also the star in his book Higgledy , Piggledy, Pop

Well , I know it's a Wolf but it's in the dog family isn't it ?

Bette Davis' Scottie was named Meg


Queen Victoria's cat was named White Heather. Her bookplate depicts a member of the cat family.

Edward Penfield depicted cats on many of his posters and magazine covers.

Most Americans will be watching the Super Bowl today but I prefer the Puppy Bowl .

To commemorate this years event here are a few dog (and Cat) related bookplates. For those of you unfamiliar with the Puppy Bowl here is a brief video clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo3zvuIOwB4

SOME INTERESTING Book & BOOKPLATE LINKS:

Jerry Morris has begun a site featuring owners with multiple bookplates

http://mysentimentallibrary.blogspot.com/2011/02/changing-bookplates-of-famous-people.html

Here is a recent blog posting From The Books in My Library about the TV show Pawn Stars and a book from Sir Isaac Newton's library:

http://www.thebooksinmylife.com/2011/02/pawn-stars-rare-books-sir-isaac-newton.html

The Legacy Press has published a new book about dating and identifying 19th century American paper.

http://www.thelegacypress.com