Hans Sibmacher or Siebmacher was another Nuremberg engraver; he worked there quite at the close of the sixteenth century and in the early years of the seventeenth. He also executed a book-plate for a member of the Holzschuher family. This is a more elaborate piece of work than Amman's, though smaller (41/2 × 33/8 inches). Its characteristic feature is a closely-woven wreath of leaves, with clusters of fruit and ornaments introduced at intervals. Seated on this wreath, at the top of the design, are two reading cherubs clothed in 'nature unadorned.' Below the design is an oblong and indented bracket.
Hans Troschel's work as a book-plate engraver is illustrated by the book-plate of yet another Nuremberg man—John William Kress of Kressenstain, dated in 1619. In this we are shown a shield set in an oval wreath of leaf-work. The helmet which surmounts it displays some elaborate work; finely-cut mantling extends itself from this on the right side and on the left; and above is a cornet, which encircles the crest. The whole is enclosed in a circle of leaves and berries, somewhat similar to that just described in speaking of Sibmacher's work; but outside this, at each of the four corners of the plate, are small shields surmounted by helmets and crests, and containing the arms of the four families from which he immediately descended, their names being given. Nestling amongst the mantling on the left side of the design is a distinct shield, on which are depicted the arms of Susanna Koler, wife of the owner of the book-plate.
Wolffgang Kilian (born 1581, died 1662) was an Augsburg man, and the book-plate which bears his signature and the date, 1635, is that of an Augsburg church dignitary—Sebastian Myller, suffragan-bishop of Adramytteum, and Canon of Augsburg. In its ornamentation it bears some resemblance to an English Jacobean book-plate. Above the shield is the head of a cherub, on which the episcopal mitre is made to rest in a somewhat comical manner; the cherub's wings protrude over the top of, and into, the shield. The inscription is contained in an oval band; outside this is an oval leaf-wreath, and outside this again an indented frame. Wolffgang was a younger brother of the more noted Lucas Kilian. Both brothers studied at Venice, and were pupils of their stepfather, Dominick Custos, who was himself a designer of book-plates.
Of Giles Sadeler's work—the Count of Rosenberg's book-plate—I shall speak directly ([pp. 130], [131]). An example of his nephew's engraving is afforded by the book-plate of Ferdinand von Hagenau, dated in 1646.
In later times—the eighteenth century—other distinguished German artists 'stooped' to book-plate engraving. Amongst them was Daniel Nicholas Chodowiecki (the son of a Dantzig drug merchant), born in 1726. Chodowiecki is best known as a book-illustrator, in which his great knowledge of costume—at a period when the point was little studied—stood him in good stead. His book-plates are probably few; only four or five are known. One of the most elaborate in design is that of a German doctor of medicine, dated in 1792, nine years before the artist's death.
In this example much of the sensational style of the generality of his work manifests itself. 'The book-plate,' says Lord De Tabley, 'in its motive reminds us much of those allegoric framed certificates of membership which various sick clubs and benefit societies accord to their members at the present day. In the foreground, Æsculapius is pushing out a skeleton draped in a long white sheet, with a scythe across its shoulder. The god is sturdily applying his serpent-twined staff to the somewhat too solid back of the terrible phantom. Behind, beneath a kind of pavilion, lies a sick person in bed; his hands are upraised in silent thankfulness as he watches the prowess of the healing deity.' The book-plate was engraved for Dr. C. S. Schintz. Besides this, Chodowiecki engraved, about 1770, a book-plate for himself, and, about ten years later, one for the French seminary at Berlin.
The book-plate of Dr. Schintz calls to mind a somewhat earlier German example, engraved by Boetius from a design by Wernerin (whose signature appears on some varieties of the plate), about the middle of the last century. It is figured opposite, and is perhaps the most gloomy book-plate that it ever entered into the mind of man to conceive. A skeleton sits upon a coffin, or a coffin-shaped tomb, holding in his right hand a pair of scales, and in his left a scythe; in the lighter balance of the scales is a scroll, bearing the inscription, 'Dan. v. 25, Mene Tekel'; in the background we see monuments, Lombardy poplars or cypress-trees, and a distant landscape. This uninviting picture is contained in a frame, inscribed, in a medallion above, 'E Bibliotheca Woogiana,' and below, Nominor â libra: libratus ne levis unquam Inveniar, præsta pondere, Christe, tuo,—a motto in which the owner makes a play upon the derivation of his name from wage, the German for a weight or balance, and asks the bestowal of divine weight on the day of soul-weighing.