On page [14] are the presumably portrait-plates of “Mary A. Bridger” and “Julia Eustace,” both by M. E. Thompson. These may be pretty, but seem, as in so many modern bookplates, to lack simplicity.
On the next page is a portrait-plate, “Edith E. Waterlow,” by J. Walter West. This, although the portrait is only a face in an oval, and outside the constant florist’s paraphernalia, still the plate has some saving simplicity.
On page [16] is what seems a sensible bookplate. It is by E. H. New, for Edward Morton, and seems to give simply a view of Edward Morton’s home, a modern house built in old style, and named Kingsclere.
On page [48] is shown a plate to which we would gladly give the palm for ugliness. We suppose it is meant for a bookplate, as it is given in this volume, and the words ex libris are distinguishable through the gloom.
On page [49] is a plate, Aubrey Beardsley, inscribed ex libris “Olive Custance.” It is not much to be admired.
On pages [50] and [51], where we are among the French ex libris, may be seen at one glance some half-dozen plates, which all happen to illustrate what is a marked eyesore in many bookplates, but has not been seriously noticed. A bookplate is naturally designed for use in a book. Now, with books should always be associated the idea of something to be valued and taken care of. How does this agree with the plates here shown? I think that symbolism should avoid this disturbing element.
There is water to drown the precious volumes, and there are beasts to devour them. In one a poor disconsolate-looking tome is shown trying to float on the dark cold waters of the deep, and as if that were not a sufficiently uncomfortable position for a book, a bird seems to be flying down, with open beak, to have a peck at it. In another cheerful composition, an angry tiger is in charge of the library of precious volumes, and has the talons of one paw on a beautiful binding, while it sticks the talons of its other paw into the leaves of an open volume.
In a third plate, a wolf is in a library, and, of course, behaving there as a wolf would. In yet another plate, a wolf is playing with a fine folio, and forming altogether as incongruous a picture as a bull in a china shop.
On page [54] is reproduced a plate, by Léon Lebègue. This may be, in disguise, a lovely creation of modern art; but the ordinary observer would take it to be a muddled map of everything or nothing, and would not paste it inside the cover of any book he or she hoped ever to open again.
As another painful instance of bookplates exhibiting books in the very last position anyone would care to see them in, on page [56], is shown a book being drowned in a pond. This is by Bracquemond.