BOOKPLATES
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
remarks—Various modes of engraving—Styles in bookplates.
OF course some people have exaggerated the importance of bookplates, and on the other hand some have affected to ignore them. Now the simple fact is that bookplates belong to books, and anything that has to do with books will assuredly charm cultivated minds until time shall be no more. If this essential point were oftener remembered, the exaggerations of both sides would be avoided.
In Germany, a country where bookplates very early found a home, the word bibliothekzeichen, or library label, is used. Germans also use the name ex libris, and in France the Latin expression ex libris is the only term in use. Naturally the owner’s name in the genitive case is always understood. In France manuscript inscriptions of ownership are very fittingly included as ex libris.
It is too late to change now; but, at all events, whether included or not under any special word, manuscript inscriptions in books by their owners will always be a very interesting study.
What, as explained above, are in France included under ex libris, were known long before the days of printing, as personal inscriptions with or without the delineation of armorial bearings are often to be found forming part of the text of books in manuscript. In fact the various relationships of wealthy patron, learned scribe, and skilled illuminator, gave much scope for these.
To come to what may be said to be known everywhere as ex libris, is to treat of those wonderful days when the earliest printed books were still a novelty. Directly several people or institutions each had copies of a certain printed book, each copy being a duplicate of the other, a wish arose to distinguish ownership.
Before treating further of bookplates, it will be well to clearly point out the different kinds of blocks or plates. The woodcut block, known in some manner to the Chinese 400 years before, was first cut in Europe early in the fifteenth century. The St. Christopher engraved in Germany in 1423, is probably the earliest. The piece of wood to be engraved was cut longwise with the grain, as a plank is cut to-day. A thin piece of some soft wood, such as pear, apple, or lime, was chosen, the design drawn upon it, and then with a knife the engraver cut away to a certain depth everything except the drawn design.