Thanksgiving Special Edition, Turkeys in Washington

I want to wish you all a very pleasant Thanksgiving holiday.Take a moment to count your blessings even in theses troubled times. I am thankful to see the turkeys leaving the WhiteHouse
On a personal note,I am proud to announce that my grandson Harrison has been selected for the Obama transition team.
See you on Sunday.

Clutter In Bookplates

A. M. Pate, Jr. was a Fort Worth businessman and philanthropist. "Aggie" Pate was involved in many history related activities including the founding of the Pate Museum of Transportation and the Fort Worth Civil War Round Table. He had a strong interest in encouraging research and scholarship and supported a number of institutions of higher learning including Texas Christian University and Texas Wesleyan.

I am guessing that Bill and Betty Covington wanted to capture their lifestyle on a bookplate sometime in the 1930's . Perhaps clutter is not the right word to use as the plate is charming and certainly more enjoyable than the home movie they may also have made.
CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

The most cluttered bookplate award goes to Sir Francis Fust. The information about him was copied directly from British Bookplates A Pictorial History* by Brian North Lee.

*If you are building a bookplate reference library this book should be in it.

Click on the image to enlarge A Cartoon which appeared in the March 5th, 1938 issue of The Saturday Review of Literature . It started me thinking about cluttered bookplates and was the inspiration for this week's posting.

That's about it for this week . If I can think of any thanksgiving bookplates I will add them later in the week.

Back From Boston,

Major decision of the day . Should I put this in with my punning plates or my Turtle plates ?

Second major decision of the day, should I open the business section of the paper to see how Paulson is pissing away my grand kid's money ?

The Reverend John Boddily was born in 1755 in Bristol England and came to America around 1795 to become the pastor of the 2nd Presbyterian Church in Newburyport Massachusetts . His plate is not listed in the standard reference books (Allen, Hamilton , Franks)and I believe it to be quite rare.

UPDATE- 11/19/20-08

Anthony Pincott was kind enough to send me the following additional information about John Boddily:

http://www.genealogybank.com/gbnk/sourcelistBooks.html

MENTIONS:
A discourse delivered by Daniel Dana at the interment of the Rev. John Boddily [microform] pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Newburyport, who deceased Nov. 4, 1802, in his 48th year.

http://noyes.rootsweb.ancestry.com/b113.htm
suggests that the IGI entry for John Boddily born Newburyport in 1755 is MISLEADING, and that this person IS TRULY the reverend.

http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/biog/moultondamon.htm
has the following, probably quoted from A History of Newburyport, Mass by John James Currier (which might be worth looking up) :
The first two names were those of the Rev. Charles William Milton of Newbury and his friend the Rev. John Boddily of Newburyport, both of English birth, who prepared together for the Presbyterian ministry at Lady Selina Huntington's college.

http://ma-vitalrecords.org/EssexCounty/Newburyport/BirthsAtoC.html
gives us a list of births at Newburyport

John, s. Rev. John and Sarah, Sept. 16, 1795.
Joseph, s. Rev. John and Sarah, Aug. 18, 1801. CR5
Maty Gushing, d. Benjamin P. and Mary, Jan. 12, 1812.
Sarah, d. Rev. John and Sarah, Sept. 10, 1799. CR5

http://files.usgwarchives.org/ma/suffolk/towns/cambridge/obits/harvard.txt
tells us that the IGI is apparently wrong also in regard to the place of Sarah’s birth
1851.- WILLIAM COOMBS WHEELWRIGHT was lost at sea,
9 September, 1854, aged 25. He was son of Ebenezer and
Sarah (Boddily) Wheelwright, and was born in Portsmouth,
N.H., 13 December, 1829. His grandparents, on his father's
side, were Ebenezer Wheelwright (born in Gloucester), and
Anne (born at Newburyport), daughter of William Coombs.
On his maternal line, his grandfather, John Boddily, was born
in England, probably in 1760. His grandmother, Sarah
(Tuckmell) Boddily, was born in Bristol, Eng., or, at least,
came from that place.


I cannot find in the IGI either the birth or marriage of a Sarah Tuckmell. Nor is there a record at Newburyport (below) of her marriage, which was therefore perhaps in England. Various churches (eg Quakers) have refused to participate in the IGI.

http://ma-vitalrecords.org/EssexCounty/Newburyport/MarriagesAtoC.html#B

All we find is:

BODDILY
Benjamin Peach, and Mary Cushing, Mar. 24, 1809.*
Elizabeth Peach, and Capt. James Cummings, Apr. 17, 1810.*
Sarah, and Ebenezer Wheelwright of Portsmouh, NH, Jan. 21, 1823.*
Susanna, and Paul Noyes, jr., Jan. 2, 1806.*

The pictorial bookplate has the motto DEUS EST AMOR and shows a bird [Noah’s dove] bearing a [olive] branch and finding new land, which is appropriately symbolic for Rev. Boddily’s transfer to America. Was this bookplate engraved by its owner ?

I returned from the Boston book and ephemera shows last night with a smile on my face. Some of my most interesting finds are included in this posting.The copy below was provided by the dealer who sold the plate ( click on the image to enlarge). The part about William Bradford having printed the plate is wishful thinking at best.

When I soaked off the plate from the detached board the paper scrap below was under the leather binding.

Here is an excellent site with more biographical information about Joshua Maddox Wallace and his descendants

http://www.murrayofstanhope.com/wallace.htm

Scrap of paper found under leather binding. The next time you chat with your bookbinder ask him (or her) what interesting things he has found under leather bindings. A binder I used to use found some 16th or 17th century playing cards under a binding.

Marty Weil publishes an excellent ephemera blog which I try to read on a regular basis.He was kind enough to mention my blog several days ago .One good turn deserves another.Here is a link:

http://www.ephemera.typepad.com/

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

YouTube - Goodbye to Alex a gifted parrot

CLICK on the words below to see Alex in action
YouTube - Goodbye to Alex a gifted parrot

In Memory Of Alex

I purchased a book for Mary which I intend to read on the train to Boston. It is about a thirty year experiment and love affair with a Parrot who was smarter than most of our outgoing elected officials. " On September 6, 2007, an African Grey Parrot named Alex died prematurely at age thirty one. His last words to his owner Irene Pepperberg, were You be good.I love You."

Dr.Emil August Göldi's biographical information can be seen at this site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mil_Goeldi

This bookplate for Dr. J.P. de Vos is combination etching and dry point ( C3/4)

by Elly de Koster. Here is a direct link to her website:

http://people.zeelandnet.nl/kely/

I have not been in touch with Reva Kern for several years. Here is an article she wrote about the technique used in creating Henri Kuhn's bookplate.

http://jvarnoso.com/exlibris/reva1.html

As I mentioned previously I will be in Boston next weekend for a book show and an ephemera show.

http://www.bostonbookfair.com/

http://www.bornsteinshows.com/

The blog will be updated on MondayNovember 20th when I return.

This video did not transmit properly but I have posted several others at the top of the page.

From Mussolini To Baseball To Tom Mix

I am not much of a sports fan and always felt a bit awkward when new customers would talk about sports at lunchtime. It's a male bonding thing that I never learned. Having said that, it was very easy to get caught up in all the excitement last week when Philadelphia finally won the world series. It seems like the right time to start off with some baseball ephemera. The engraved bookplate is by A. N. Macdonald and the trade card is for the Briggs Piano Co. of Boston (circa 1888)

Last night we set the clocks back one hour. When I was very young my parents explained that this was done so that the farmers would have an extra hour to plant.This never made sense to me then and still doesn't. Why don't the farmers get up an hour earlier to plant?

Some day I would like to write a book about the bookplates used by famous people. My life is full of "some days" so it may never happen but here is a small group of the M's .

If You Click On Any Image It Will Enlarge

A word about Tom Mix for those of you who never heard of him. He was among other things a movie actor . In the late 1940's every weekday afternoon I would listen to The Tom Mix radio show. It never occurred to me until just now that he was already dead and gone . His bookplate is quite distinctive.

Note I just started to read about Tom Mix on www.b-westerns.com and spotted the following:

"Around this time, the Ralston Purina Company of St. Louis negotiated a deal with Mix to use his name and character for a new radio show, and 'The Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters' first hit the airwaves in September, 1933 over NBC. Mix was never a participant in the broadcasts --- the TM-Bar Ranch was the setting for the radio series with Ralston peddling their cereal products from 'Checkerboard Square'. For much of its run, the program was a 15 minute serial adventure, running Monday through Friday around 5:00 p.m. along with other quarter hour adventures such as 'Captain Midnight' and 'Jack Armstrong'. It went off the air for a year during WW2 but returned over the Mutual Broadcasting Network, in 15 and 30 minute versions, with Curley Bradley in the role of Tom Mix. The show ended in 1950"

I bought the Mountbatten plate last week. He has at least one other plate.

Each week, I try to include at least one bookish link of interest. Steven Wurth, a bookseller in upstate New York has a a very informative blog which I am currently reading.

http://www.collectiblebookblog.com/

See you next week.

Writers and Bookplates

Exchanging duplicates with other collectors is one of the things I find most enjoyable in this little hobby I dwell on each week. In a recent exchange I received a copy of Schätze der Exlibriskunst
by Heinz Decker (Isbn 3-925300-44-9). It was published by The German Exlibris Society
http://www.exlibris-deg.de/
The book is profusely illustrated and belongs in your reference library if you are interested in bookplates used by writers.The section that I found most interesting is called Erfundene,dedizierte und postume Dichterexlibris (loosely translated, with the assistance of Google it means invented and dedicated posthumously ) . Some of these "honorarium" plates are illustrated below.
I have unknowingly bid for several of them on Ebay .

James Joyce (1882-1941) by Johnny Friedlaender

Thomas Mann (1875-1955) by Emil Preetorius

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle( 1859- 1930) D.F.A. Sc , K.L.G.,Fec.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) by Michel Fingesten

Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) designer unknown

Here is a link to Claus Wittal , a very knowledgeable dealer and publisher who can assist you in ordering this book.

http://www.exlibrisart.com/

While I am wearing my book reviewer hat I would also recommend Books, A Memoir by Larry McMurtry. It has nothing to do with bookplates but if you like browsing in antiquarian bookshops you will probably enjoy reading this book.

See you next week.

Philatelic Bookplates

Last year I spotted the "exlibris tattoo" in Fine Books & Collections. The Bat Country books logo was first spotted several weeks ago at http://hangfirebooks.blogspot.com/

It is attached to Nathan Roberts' arm and his blog is http://batcountrybooks.blogspot.com/

Here is an assortment of philatelic bookplates from the libraries of collectors and stamp dealers.

John K. Tiffany was a very prominent stamp collector.Follow the link for more information

about him.

http://www.stamps.org/almanac/alm_HallofFame_1941.htm#Tiffany

PHILLIPS, Charles James 1863-1940. Educated King Edward’s School, Birmingham. Trained as accountant. While employed at Birmingham Assay Office, became stamp dealer in Edgbaston, 1885. Founded Birmingham P.S. 1886. Published at Edgbaston, ‘The Stamp Advertiser and Auction Record’, which became Stanley Gibbons Monthly Journal when he acquired a controlling interest in that company in 1890. Wrote handbooks on Fiji [1908], Mexico [1917], Paraguay [1912], a history of Stanley Gibbons Ltd under the title ‘Fifty Years of Philately’ [1906], and ‘The Future of Philately from the Viewpoint of the Collector and Dealer’ [1924]. Disposed of his interest in the company to George Hamilton-Smith, 1922, and settled in New York. Dealt with sale of Henry J Duveen collection, and responsible for the lotting of the American section of Arthur Hind collection. Awarded Special Gold Medal of the Collectors’ Club. RDP 1921. Died in New York. His brother, William Henry Phillips (1864-1912), was also a director of Stanley Gibbons Ltd.

Designed by Carl S. Junge

For more information about Harry Lindquist follow this link:
http://www.stamps.org/almanac/alm_HallofFame_1975-79.htm#Lindquist

Engraved by Harry L. Peckmore -Click on image to enlarge.

George T. Turner (1906-1980) was an expert on Internal Revenue Stamps and served as curator of philatelic holdings at The Smithsonian from 1958 to 1962

Engraved by Harry L. Peckmore

Two Pennsylvania stamp dealers

Brian Birch collects postal and philatelic bookplates and was kind enough to send me information about The Aberdeen And North Of Scotland Society bookplate .

If you have philatelic bookplates for sale or trade he can be reached at

BrianBirch@blueyonder.co.uk

"According to the Society records, the bookplate was designed in March 1912 by the Society’s then librarian, Peter John Anderson(1). The bookplate consists of the Society’s name on a lozenge background, in a rectangle constructed from four different printers ornaments, with a stamp in each corner. Although three of the stamps are classics from the 1840s and 1860s, the fourth is a relatively common Bavarian issue from 1911.

According to Anderson(2), The four corners of the bookplate were selected as representative of successful portraiture: Queen Victoria on the Black Penny of 1840; Washington on the U.S.A. 10c. of 1847; Hermes on the Greek issue of 1861; and the Prince Regent Luitpold on the Bavarian issue of 1856; while the border includes four varieties from the British Guiana provisionals of 1862. "

References

1. Jeffrey C. Stone: Private Correspondence.,November 2004 to March 2005

2. P.J. Anderson Scottish Philatelic Literature,1863-1923.,The Philatelist 1924,pp.1.9 & 5-7

Daniel Mitsui has gotten quite a few new bookplate commissions since I last wrote about him .Here is an up to date link.

http://danielmitsui.tripod.com/artwork/bookplates.html

Here is link for Shelley Lane Kommers ,a book illustrator who has some charming children's bookplates for sale

http://oiseaux.typepad.com/oiseaux/2008/10/new-bookplates.html

See you next week.

British Bookplates, More Research Required

I was looking through an album of 20th century British bookplates this morning and selected a few of my favorites. There is never enough time to research every bookplate so the backlog grows. If you know something about any of these owners or the artists please share it with us. I purchased the Alex Allan bookplate in England after seeing it in The Bookplate Society Journal (vol.v11,1989). It is a wood engraving by Anne Jope and it is one of the earliest if not the first plate depicting a computer. The owner may be the larger than life Alex Allan ,Chairman of The Joint Intelligence Commission Of The United Kingdom and Grateful Dead enthusiast. Here is a news article about him.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2879772.ece

The Plot Thickens: After I completed this weeks blog I started doing more research about Alex Allan , the spymaster. Around July 5th of this year he was found semi - conscious , in a pool of blood at his home.There are several conflicting news stories, pneumonia , poisoning ,a botched assassination attempt and then all news coverage seems to disappear. Very strange indeed.

Update- October 13th, 2008- I am truly impressed. Alex Allan promptly responded to my Email inquiry as follows:

"Dear Lewis

Yes, the bookplate is mine. My wife was an artist, and a friend of Anne Jope's. She commissioned Anne to do the bookplate for my birthday one year.

I don't use any other bookplate, I'm afraid.

Best wishes
Alex Allan "

The etched Alice proof was executed by Bertha Gorst in 1914 for Alice B. Vail of Bangor Maine

12/29/2014- Thank you Mr. Anker
"Dear Mr Jaffe,

I have very recently aquired an etching by Bertha Aiken Gorst, and during my research into this
artist/ etcher I came across your website on which I note that you have an etched bookplate 
( Alice a proof etching 1914) by the above artist, and are requesting any information relating to Bertha Gorst.

I have manged to discover some biographical details which may be of interest to you,
which I have listed below.

Bertha Aiken Gorst.  Ne: Mrs John . G. Aiken
1873 - 1938

Born in Thornton Hough, Wirral, Cheshire, England.

Resided in Llanyollen, Wales.

Bertha Gorst also included in:
Bookplate International
Vol 8/ 2001
This information was taken from the
Lexikon der Exlibriskunstler.

I hope this information will be of some interest and assistance to you in your endeavours.


I am yours sincerely,

Keith Anker  "
 

The signed engraved proof shown below was done by C. W. Sherborn for President Cleveland's wife Frances. Click on the image to magnify it and see all the details.

Mr.and Mrs. Diamond of Cleveland Ohio obtained the rights to use some of John Austin's book illustrations for their bookplates. Here are some links for additional information about John Austen:

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2007/05/23/the-art-of-john-austen-1886-1948/

http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/austen.htm

I Have previously written about cutting edge technology in the Victorian era as depicted in bookplates. Here is one of the best examples. Update-Anthony Pincott has writtten to tell me that this plate was done by Thomas Erat Harrison.

Matilda Constance Ismay was the wife of the founder of the White Star Shipping Line. The artist whose cipher is in the lower right corner is unknown to me.

The plate shown below is one which was purchased on Ebay. The owner Harry Arthur James was interested in boxing, fishing and chemistry. The artist's initials look like T.W.

James Guthrie designed this plate for Pickford Waller.

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