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IN putting forth this little book it is not my intention to furnish complete lists of the works of different engravers, lists of the book-plates of any given period or nationality, or indeed any kind of a reference book for the collector. My purpose is merely to set down in somewhat desultory and rambling fashion certain facts and incidents in history and biography which are associated with the users of some book-plates of particular interest, and to show by such means in what the charm of the book-plate consists. In addition to the rich stores of historical and biographical literature which the noteworthy book-plates inspire one to delve in, there are interesting features which the student of genealogy and the lover of heraldry will recognize. These, as pertaining rather to the scientific and technical side of the subject, I leave untouched in these pages, as the investigation and publication of those branches belong to the specialist. In the preparation of these remarks my own collection has been principally drawn upon and has furnished the greater part of my material, while in the published works of other writers upon this subject I have found both confirmation of many of my own theories and suggestions which have led to further research. C. D. A. HARTFORD, October, 1896. GERMANY, the fatherland of the art of printing from movable type, and of the industry of wood-cutting for making impressions in ink on paper, is likewise the home-land of the book-plate. The earliest dated wood-cut of accepted authenticity is the well-known " St. Christopher of 1423," which was discovered in the Carthusian monastery of Buxheim in Suabia; this rough and primitive piece of wood-cutting was probably the work of one of the monks, undoubtedly familiar with the use of the pen in transcribing, and of the use of colors in illuminating. It so happens that the plate which until recently has held the honor of being the earliest book-plate known, was also found in this same monastery. This plate, which pictures an angel with outspread wings, carrying a shield in his hands, upon the field of which is depicted an ox with a ring passed through its nose, was pasted into either a book or a manuscript given to the monastery by Hildebrande Brandenburg (aus Biberach), and the date of it is probably past the middle of the fifteenth century. An earlier and much uglier plate both in design and execution — the picture, possibly heraldic, being of a bristly hedge-hog carrying a flower in his mouth and trampling upon fallen leaves — has been brought to light, however, still doing duty upon the cover of an old Latin vocabulary. One other example is also known which belongs to this century; and as it too is associated with the same Carthusian monastery, we are led to conjecture that the monks who in the privacy of their cells, or within the quiet cloister, where the muttering brothers as they passed could stop and watch them, practised the new art, were the first to devise and employ a pictorial label to indicate the ownership of books. These designs are of course cut in wood; the heavy black lines, clumsy designing, and utter freedom from artistic finish, perspective, or chiaro-oscuro effects, so familiar to all who examine old prints, are exemplified in these plates. Several of these are printed on the reverse side of pages from some block-book of an earlier date. Without meaning to devote any time here to a discussion of the probable origin of the book-plate, we may call to mind, in passing, the activity which this century saw in the manufacture of prints from wood-cuts; on single sheets, maps, and pictures of saints; the block-book with its archaic pictures, and the work of the Kartenmaler as well as that of the Formschneider. The cities along the Rhine were full of artisans, both among the clergy and the laity, who were clever at this kind of work, and the number of wood-workers in Italy and France was also very large. The introduction of printing from movable type seemed at first to aim a severe blow at the industries of the various guilds, so widely supported, and the new art was regarded with the greatest jealousy. At Augsburg the feeling amounted to open and positive antagonism. Could it be that in casting about for a new use for the old art, that the book-plate was hit upon as a promising subject ? Albert Durer designed and very possibly engraved book-plates. For his friend Wilibald Pirckheimer, the Nuremburg jurist, whose big, bulbous face is familiar to all, he made an heraldic plate, now of great interest and some rarity; indeed, Durer's portrait of the great book-collector is sometimes found used as a book-plate. Among the much-prized examples of early German plates are those by Holbein, Hans Sebald Beham, Jost Amman, Lucas Cranach, Johann Troschel, Wolfgang Kilian of Augsburg, Virgil Solis, and Hans Siebmacher, artists all, whose work is of interest not only to the book-plate collector, but to all interested in the history of engraving. Indeed, one of the delights of the humble book-plate collector is to point out to his more ambitious brother, the collector of prints, that these old masters whose works he prizes so highly did not despise the book-plate, trifle though it be, but condescended to bestow labor and time and to use their talents in its designing and engraving. Durer, who could celebrate the triumphs of Maximilian in a series of blocks which made a complete picture some seven feet by one and one-half, did not disdain to design a little print to indicate the ownership of a book. I do not intimate that the old book-plates were insignificant in size; far from it. Those old tomes, bound in sole leather, sided with stout boards, and clasped and chained with iron, demanded an ample label to set forth with proper dignity the fact of ownership. Books were few, valuable, and often very large. Thus it happens that one old book-collector had some twenty different sizes of his plate, to satisfy his critical eye, as he carefully regarded the width of the margins while pasting in the plates, — and this, too, in an age that knew nothing of process-reproduction and when each separate plate had to be engraved by hand. Place a plate four inches by two in a quarto ? By no means ! Cover the whole side of a dainty 12mo with a plate of equal size? Perish the thought! A special plate for each sized book! Continued on this page |