Gutenberg’s mid-15th Century invention of the printing press set off a wave of book collecting. Pride of ownership – and the desire to protect treasured tomes – spurred the creation of printed bookplates to identify volumes as part of private and public libraries.
Also known by the Latin term ex libris meaning “from the books of” and by extension “from the library of,” the plates were pasted on the inside front cover of individual books. Sometimes the plates were a simple listing of the owner’s name; but more often they were embellished with coat-of-arms or specially designed illustrations showing a portrait of the owner, a view of the owner’s estate, the interior of the owner’s library or an image that referred to the owner’s occupation.
Early Bookplates
Although marks of ownership date to papyri owned by Pharaoh Amenophis III circa 1400 B. C., the earliest printed bookplates are 15th Century German plates such as the Igler woodcut from c. 1450 and the Hildebrand Brandenburg plate dated c. 1480. The practice of affixing printed bookplates appears to have proliferated in Germany before becoming popular in other European countries. Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein engraved a number of plates in the early 16th Century.
From the 1520s until the end of the 16th Century, bookplates began spreading to France, Britain, Italy, Portugal, Holland and Spain. Their popularity continued into the 17th and 18th Centuries, evolving from primarily heraldic designs to pictorial illustrations that reflected the artistic trends of the time.
Stephen Daye created the earliest documented American bookplate in 1642. In the 18th Century, Paul Revere and Nathaniel Hurd engraved bookplates; 19th Century American designers include Sidney Lawton Smith, William Fowler Hopson, Edwin Davis French, Arthur Nelson Macdonald and Joseph Winfred Spenceley.
Collecting Bookplates as Miniature Illustrations
In 1880, J. Leicester Warren (later Lord de Tabley) published A Guide to the Study of Book-Plates (Ex-Libris). Societies of collectors were established in England, Germany, France and the United States beginning in the 1890s. Bookplate collecting continued to be popular until the late 1920s.
After a lull of several decades, bookplate collecting came back into vogue in the 1950s. An international society of bookplate collectors, the FISAE, was created in 1966. Since the 1970s many national societies have been reinvigorated.
Major collections include the following:
- The Frederikshavn Museum (Denmark)
- The Gutenberg Museum (Germany)
- Museo Exlibris Mediterraneo (Italy)
- The Nancy Library (France)
- The Moscow Museum (Russia)
- Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks Collection, British Museum (Great Britain)
- Yale Bookplate Collection (United States)
Distinguished Bookplate Designers and Owners
A number of well-known artists, illustrators and designers have created bookplates including William Hogarth, Thomas Bewick, Aubrey Beardsley, M. C. Escher, Rockwell Kent, Howard Pyle, James A. M. Whistler, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Marc Chagall and Alberto Giacometti.
Famous owners of bookplates range from royalty to industrialists, presidents to cartoonists. Catherine the Great, William Penn, Charles de Gaulle, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Henry Ford, John F. Kennedy and Walt Disney are among the list of celebrated bookplate owners.
Many readers and institutions continue to commission personalized bookplates for their libraries. However, the advent of electronic books may eliminate the need for bookplates in the future, making the miniature gems even more collectible.
Sources:
- Johnson, Fridolf, A Treasury of Bookplates from the Renaissance to the Present, Dover Publications, 1977
- Junod, Benoît, “The Most Important Ex-libris Museums,” aed.org
- Junod, Benoît, Curator, “The World of Ex Libris: A Historical Retrospective,” karaart.com
- Keenan, James P., The Art of the Bookplate, Barnes & Noble, 2003
- Lee, Brian North, British Bookplates: A Pictorial History, David & Charles, 1979
- “This is My Book,” Yale University Alumni Magazine, March/April 2010
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