ex libris (bookplate)

One of the best known is a small hand-coloured woodcut representing a shield of arms supported by an angel, which was pasted into books presented to the Carthusian monastery of Buxheim by Brother Hildebrand Brandenburg of Biberach, about the year 1480—the date being fixed by that of the recorded gift.

[13] The earliest known American example is the plain printed label of Stephen Daye, the Massachusetts printer of the Bay Psalm Book, 1642.

In 2010 John Blatchly asked whether the hand-painted armorial device attached to a folio of the first volume of Quatuor concilium generalium belonging to Cardinal Wolsey should be regarded as the first English bookplate.

[17] The earliest English bookplate appears to be the gift plate of Sir Nicholas Bacon; it adorns a book that once belonged to Henry VIII, and now is located in the King's library, British Museum.

They are as a rule very plainly armorial, and the decoration is usually limited to a symmetrical arrangement of mantling, with an occasional display of palms or wreaths.

First, they invariably display the tincture lines and dots, after the method originally devised in the middle of the century by Petra Sancta, the author of Tesserae Gentilitiae, which by this time had become adopted throughout Europe.

The main characteristics of the style which prevailed during the Queen Anne and early Georgian periods are: ornamental frames suggestive of carved oak; a frequent use of fish-scales; trellis or diapered patterns, for the decoration of plain surfaces; and, in the armorial display, a marked reduction in the importance of the mantling.

The introduction of the scallop-shell as an almost constant element of ornamentation gives a foretaste of the Rocaille-Coquille, the so-called Chippendale fashions of the next reign.

Straight or concentric lines and all appearances of flat surface are avoided; the helmet and its symmetrical mantling tends to disappear, and is replaced by the plain crest on a fillet.

Later, however, the composition becomes exceedingly light and complicated; every conceivable and often incongruous element of decoration is introduced, from cupids to dragons, from flowerets to Chinese pagodas.

Bookplates of this period exhibit an appearance which at once recalls the decorative manner made popular by architects and designers such as Chambers, the Adams, Josiah Wedgwood, Hepplewhite and Sheraton.

[19] Some bookplates were issued by institutions, often religious ones, which awarded books to individuals to recognise achievements such as academic performance and good behaviour.

Of this kind the best-defined English genre may be recalled: the library interior—a term which explains itself—and book-piles, exemplified by the ex-libris of W. Hewer, Samuel Pepys's secretary.

Near the turn of the 20th century, the composition of personal book tokens became recognized as a minor branch of a higher art, and there has come into fashion an entirely new class of designs which, for all their wonderful variety, bear as unmistakable a character as that of the most definite styles of bygone days.

The development in various directions of process work[clarify], by facilitating and cheapening the reproduction of beautiful and elaborate designs, has no doubt helped much to popularize the bookplate — a thing which in older days was almost invariably restricted to ancestral libraries or to collections otherwise important.

Of these the best-known are C. W. Sherborn (see Plate) and G. W. Eve in England, and in America J. W. Spenceley of Boston, Mass., K. W. F. Hopson of New Haven, Conn., and E. D. French of New York City.

[22] Bookplates are of interest to collectors either as specimens of bygone decorative fashion or as personal relics of well-known people, and can command high prices.

Some collectors attempt to acquire plates of all kinds (for example, the collection of Irene Dwen Andrews Pace, now at Yale University, comprising 250,000 items).

There are still substantial numbers of collectors for whom the study of bookplates spanning 500 years is a fascinating source of historical, artistic and socio-cultural interest.