Crossing now to England we find ourselves in the country in which the book-plate has been most widely used, which has the greatest number of interesting examples and in which the design reflects more of the spirit of the times possibly than in any other; here too, unless America be admitted to have achieved the distinction, the book-plate had reached its highest art.
In a folio volume once the property of Cardinal Wolsey and afterward belonging to his royal master, we can still see the gorgeous ecclesiastical book-plate done in colors, of its first owner. This is supposed to have been made about 1520, and it is the earliest English plate thus far found. But two others are known which belong to this century: one by the name of Tresham whose owner was made a knight by Queen Elizabeth and whose son was connected with the Powder Plot; and the other, of Sir Nicholas Bacon, known as " the father of his country and of Sir Francis Bacon"
The earliest mention of the book-plate in English literature is in the compendious diary of the gossipy Pepys. Under date of July 16, 1688, he mentions spending an hour at the plate-maker's planning the little plate for his books. He, one remembers, really loved his books and used to overhaul them, re-number and weed them out, once a year; and into this bothersome but unquestioned service the whole family was impressed; the job was put through in a hurry, and as to despatch and neatness was compared with the record of the previous year, and a new note was made in the diary. Pepys had several book-plates. We find that in most of his books now preserved in Magdalene College Library, Cambridge, he used two kinds, one at each end, - his magnificent portrait plate on the front cover and the official Navy-yard plate at the tail. He had at first an armorial plate, but his love of personal display led him to make use of his portrait as a book-plate: in this, engraved in two sizes by Robert White, we see the vain old babbler arrayed in his much-loved finery, - velvet, lace, and imposing wig ! Possibly the very wig he bought in the Plague Year because it was so cheap for so fine a one, and which he was afraid to wear for a long time thereafter, fearing that the maker might have cut the hair from the head of a victim of the dread disease !
But we cannot linger to mention individual examples of particular interest. It is not until the beginning of the eighteenth century that the plates really begin to thicken; but from 1725 up to the present day, the output from engravers, good, bad, and indifferent, steadily grows. In picking up an old book, and noticing its quaint old heraldic book-plate, one would naturally think of its possibilities for amusement, instruction, and absorbing interest. Little would one think that hundreds of persons, ladies as well as gentlemen among the number, in all parts of the world, are taking a great interest in the collection and classification of these bits of engraving; but so it is. An enormous amount of the time and money which the collecting spirit demands of its victims is now devoted to this pursuit. The very first collector of book-plates as book-plates — for they must have strayed into the collections of prints before this time - was a lady, - a Miss Jenkins of Bath, England, who in 1820 was forming the little group which ultimately became the nucleus of the mammoth collection of over one hundred thousand specimens which Dr. Joseph Jackson Howard now owns. From this time on, the book-plate was regarded as of some interest by various antiquarians and heraldic students.
At length, in the fulness of time, in the year 1880, the information that had gradually been gathered was assembled and put into book-form by the Hon. J. Leicester Warren (the late Lord de Tabley), a scholar and poet of high reputation. This book remains to this day absolutely the best work on the subject, although scores of writers have followed the path he blazed. In this book the reader was shown how to classify his plates intelligently, was informed of the literary, historical, biographical, and artistic material which clustered round them, and was furnished with descriptions of the different styles and illustrations of them, that he might be able to appreciate and understand the charm of the book-plate to the genuine collector. These were new ideas, for hitherto only the heraldry or the engraver had been of interest to any one.
To Lord de Tabley also is due the nomenclature universally adopted by which we distinguish the styles. The great body of English plates display armorial bearings, and while the plain armorial plate unadorned and bare continues in unbroken sequence from the earliest day up to the present, the plates with more artistic pretensions have followed certain vogues which may be described and chronologically placed with sufficient accuracy. The plates, then, which were in use from about 1700 to about 1745, and which may easily be recognized as having many features in common, are called Jacobean: this name is given them because they came into use during the reign of the last James. In these plates the shield of arms is set in the centre of a stiff and formal frame, which often resembles wood-carving. Heavy garlands of flowers, bunches of fruit, stiff and conventional arrangements of leaves and blossoms, faces of animals, term-figures, and quite an assortment of architectural and allegorical embellishments, were superimposed upon the frame. Latticed or diapered backgrounds were common, and a scallop shell or a grinning, grotesque face was often placed at the bottom as a finishing touch. The two sides of the frame exactly coincided, and the whole effect of the style was massive, severe, and classical. This style was at its height about 1730.
About the middle of the century the famous T. Chippendale introduced a certain airy and graceful manner of designing furniture and upholstery. The designers of book-plates as well as the artisans in other lines at once made use of its principles in their line of work; and as the style of the book-plate was greatly modified by this new conception, and became so faithful a reproduction of the spirit of Chippendale's work, such plates came to bear his name as their distinctive title. At once the stiffness and conventionality of the Jacobean style disappeared : in the new style the two sides of the shield were seldom symmetrical; the shield of arms was enclosed within an escutcheon of graceful design not unlike the human ear in general outline, and the surrounding decoration is full of pretty and dainty touches, varying of course according to the ability of the engraver. Lord de Tabley says that the mark and stamp of the Chippendale book-plate is its border or frilling of open shell-work, set close up to the outer edge of the escutcheon. The plates in this style are very taking. One likes them at a glance; whereas the Jacobean needs acquaintance to be fully understood and appreciated. Closely succeeding the Chippendale, and indeed coming into use before it went out, is the style going by the name of Ribbon and Wreath or Festoon. As the name indicates, these plates depend upon wreaths (mostly of roses, sprays of holly or of palm) and floating ribbons for their simple but pleasing decoration.
More pleasing perhaps to the general observer are the plates of a pictorial or allegorical character: the library interiors showing the student surrounded by his long rows of books; the portrait plates, which give us a chance to see the looks of the book-owner; or the glimpses into the abode of the gods, with many an old acquaintance bringing knowledge to man, or sitting upon the clouds in superintendence of the actions of those below; and those which, by their use of differing accessories, indicate the angler, the hunter, the book-lover, the specialist in one branch or another of learning, art, or amusement: indeed, as we escape from the load Dame Heraldry lays upon the designer, the greater variety and charm of the designs at once impresses one.



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