To collect early bindings is a noble hobby, but one which is, and ever must remain, the hobby of a few wealthy collectors, whereas the collection of ex-libris was, until quite recently, a taste requiring patience and skill rather than a well-filled purse.
Styles and periods in French ex-libris are not nearly so well defined, nor so easily recognized, as they are in British plates by the simple terms we use, such as Early English, Jacobean, Chippendale, wreath and ribbon, book-pile, library interior, etc.
French military plates are often decorated with flags, cannon, and fine trophies of arms, but book-piles and library interiors are somewhat uncommon, as are also early plates containing the portraits of their owners.
One of the earliest portrait plates is that of Amy Lamy, with the motto “Usque ad aras,” probably engraved by some pupil of Thomas de Leu, of which the date is doubtful.
Another, and of greater interest, is that of the famous critic, the Abbé Desfontaines (1685-1745), a fine engraving by Schmit, after Tocqué, representing Petr. Fr. Guyot Desfontaines presb. Rothomag., with the following lines:
Dum te Phœbus amat scribentem, Mœvius odit,
Et lepidis salibus mæret inepta cohors.
Which a French admirer translates thus:
Chéri du dieu des arts, craint et haï des sots,
L’Ignorance en courroux frémit de ses bons mots.
On modern ex-libris portraits occasionally occur, as on that of M. Manet, with the punning phrase, “Manet et Manebit,” and that of a well-known English collector and scholar, Mr. H. S. Ashbee, designed by Paul Avril, a French artist. Another represents M. Georges Vicaire, in the costume of a chef, superintending the preparation of a ragout of books to please the literary gourmands. But probably the finest modern portrait ex-libris is that drawn by M. Henry André, the book-plate artist, for himself: this is dated 1894.
The collector must be on his guard against modern reprints from old plates, or ex-libris printed from re-engraved copper plates.