Book-Plates

by William John Hardy

I referred, at the close of the previous chapter, to the large number of English book-plates engraved during the last two years of the seventeenth century and first ten of the eighteenth. The great majority of these book-plates are in the 'Simple Armorial' style, and there is upon these a very great similarity in the way in which that style is represented; indeed, they may well have been, all of them, the work of less than a dozen artists. Any distinctive feature that exists is to be found in the treatment of the mantling. For instance: it is finely cut on the book-plates of Nicholas Penny, Lord Cornwallis, Lord Roos, and 'John Sayer of Hounslow, in the County of Midd., Esq^r,' all dated in 1700; on the Sayer plate the inscription is enclosed in a Jacobean scroll; it is heavy, and stiffly cut in the book-plates of James Bengough, Richard Newdigate, Sir William Hustler, and John Godfrey, all dated in 1702; it is leaflike and graceful on the book-plates of William Thompson and Francis Columbine, dated in 1708, and of Thomas Rowney, dated in 1713, whilst the book-plate of 'Gostlet Harington of Marshfield, in the Coun. of Glocester, Gent., 1706,' is unique, the mantling being cut like strawberry leaves. There is a peculiar effect produced by the way in which this example is printed, and the lettering of the inscription is also unusual.

There is one of these book-plates which the reader should notice from the peculiar arrangement of the decorative accessories, occasioned by the fact that the owner was both a spiritual and temporal peer. I refer to that of 'Nathanael Crewe, Lord Bishop of Durham and Baron Crewe of Stene, 1703.' Here the mantling springs from the helmet, rises to the level of the crest, and terminates at the heads of the supporters; a baron's coronet appears instead of a mitre, and behind the shield are a crozier and sword in saltire, the decoration of the head of the crozier being so like the form of the mantling that it seems, at first sight, to be part of it.

The 'Jacobean' style is far more ornate than that last mentioned, and the book-plate of 'John Reilly of the Middle Temple, Esqr.,' is a fair example of the best kind of Jacobean work. The escutcheon is raised on an elaborate and richly-carved Jacobean sideboard; mantling is still there, but it is curtailed, and seems almost resting on the top of the sideboard, on either side of which are columns, given in high relief; on each is carved a perpendicular festoon of leaves. Below the shield, crouched on the ledge of the sideboard, are two eagles with expanded wings; each holds in its beak one end of the ribbon which ties into a bunch the corners of a fringed cloth bearing the inscription already quoted; below the eagles, inverted cornucopiæ pour out books upon the floor on which the sideboard stands.

This plate may probably be dated very early in the eighteenth century, or even late in the seventeenth, since it is recorded that John Reilly's signature, with the date '1679,' occurs in a book in which it is fastened. To whichever date it belongs, the Simple Armorial style was then in general use,—that is to say, so far as the book-plates of private individuals are concerned. These, as we have just seen, nearly all bear a helmet, varying according to the owner's social rank, and from that falls the mantling, more or less elaborate. But if we look at the book-plates, dated in or about the year 1700, of certain colleges at Oxford or Cambridge, at ladies' book-plates of the same period,—none of which, of course, display a helmet,—and at some others in which the arms are given in an oval, we see that the blank on either side of the shield (consequent upon the absence of the helmet from which the mantling would fall) is supplied by work distinctly Jacobean. Lord De Tabley, whose descriptions in justification of the names he has bestowed upon the several styles we shall not hesitate to quote in this chapter, thus describes this work:—

'To supply this void in decoration, a distinct frame was placed round the escutcheons, and this framework was ornamented with ribbons, palm branches, or festoons.

'The prominent or high-relief portions of this frame were not set close to the edges of the escutcheons, but between it and them; an interval of flat-patterned surface nearly always intervened, in which, as upon a wall, the actual shield was embedded. This we shall call the lining of the armorial frame; and we shall find this lining is usually imbricated with a pattern of fish-scales, one upon another, or diapered into lattice-work. The scale-covered or latticed interval of lining is the characteristic of the style.... Another step in the external decoration was to add a bracket, distinct from the frame, upon which the shield, in its frame, was supposed to rest. This bracket naturally initiated the decorative art and surface arrangement of the shield-frame.'

As a rule, too, an escallop-shell forms the centre of the bracket in Jacobean book-plates. In some instances it is placed in the centre below, but more usually in the centre above; and then in the centre below we have the head of some mythical and uninviting monster. Either as quasi-supporters on the ledges of the bracket, right and left, or on the side ledges of the shield, if the bracket is amalgamated with the frame, are 'things' selected from the following miscellaneous collection—lions; cherubs, male and female; term-figures; busts of fairies, with butterfly wings; angels, generally engaged in trumpet-blowing, etc.

The student should notice this escallop-shell, because we shall see it introduced into the style of decoration that succeeded the Jacobean—there it became a shelly border rather than a distinct shell.