Ex Libris
One of the book-fetishist's greatest pleasures: a beautiful ex libris.
Bookplates! I’ve been doing some research on the personalized bookplates of centuries past, putting together a certain ahem-hem birthday gift lately. Since the first days when anyone lent anyone a book— or at least since the mid-15th century— nobles and monks have claimed ownership of their tomes of with ex libris labels. Collecting and viewing these ephemera became something of a hobbyist’s fascination in the intervening years, like stamp collecting, but all that nomenclature and Linnean categorization is really dull.
What’s great is sifting through the bookplates of anonymous bibliophiles of eras gone by, imagining the books they read and what their ex libris designs, decorated with miniature landscapes, slogans, coats of arms, allegorical iconography, said about the kind of people they were.
Get your fill via this link. And hats off to the Pratt Libraries for scanning and sharing over 1200 fantastic ex libris designs!
wow! just went on a flickr favouriting spree – thanks for sharing 🙂 I’m very bookish and I love the idea of sharing your library; I loved that line line in ‘Out of Africa’, “does he lend them?”…when books were treasured as they should be.
Dear Sheila,
What a nice line–“does he lend them?” One of the most important realizations for me when putting together Encyclopedia was that it should be a smallish book, something that a reader would hold intimately close, and not at arm’s length like you would a photo book.
The physicality of books is so evocative, don’t you think?
Thanks for writing!
Best wishes,
Jessica
Jessica, I love this topic and thanks so much for the marvelous link to the Pratt Libraries. Lewis Jaffe, a bookplate devotee, has a wonderful blog at http://bookplatejunkie@blogspot.com.
Dear Mary,
Glad you like the post—and thanks so much for the link. I’ll have to check it out!
All best wishes,
Jessica