A Toni Hofer woodcut bookplate
What a difference a couple days makes! A whole new world has opened up to me, and my wallet has opened up as well. Here’s why.
On Friday, I posted “Bookplate Porn: “A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever,” and I challenged readers to submit their favorite bookplates. (In the post, I had admired some of the excellent Stanford Library bookplates of Lisa Haderlie Baker.)
No sooner did I post my short piece on Facebook page than I got an almost instant reply from colleague Mike Ross: “Ooohhh. When I get back home next week,” he promised, “I’ll have to find the bookplates a Linz, Austria, woodcutter made for our grandfather, who’d helped there in the late stages of World War II. They’re gorgeous!” However, he didn’t wait till he got home to post again. He added this 12 minutes later: “I just remembered his name: Toni Hofer. He’s mentioned in a number of articles, including this one.”
Bookplate engraving by Niu Ming-Ming
The article is from – get this – a bookplate collecting society in Austria, called Österreichische Exlibris Gesellschaft, or the Austrian Exlibris Society, emphasizing the bookplate as “a bearer of culture … that was identifiable as an art form in itself.” It was an important enough organization that the Nazis messed with it. Who knew bookplates had that kind of clout?
It was all, however, just the tip of an iceberg. A search for Toni Hofer (we couldn’t wait for Mike Ross to come home, wherever he is) led me to Ebay. Type in “exlibris” into the search function to discover a world of wonders. Apparently, there is a whole subterranean movement to collect bookplates. Over a thousand are featured on ebay even as I write, some from the Czech Republic, others from Romania, Russia, Finland, Denmark. Check them out.
Naturally, I couldn’t resist. I’ve bought three already, and bid on two others. You can look at hundreds right now. One of the wiggiest is from a Chinese artist at right.
We accept submissions by iphone
Back to the contest. More contestants. In case you haven’t figured it out, there will be no winners and no losers in this contest. It’s like Lewis Carroll‘s Caucus Race; as the Dodo said, “Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.” Except there aren’t any prizes, either. Consider everyone getting honorable mentions. And it won’t end. Keep sending me pictures of pretty bookplates till the end of time.
Elena Danielson replied by email yesterday with her own nomination. She sent a photo from her iphone with the note: “Hand Printed at Paper Crane HMB … This one pasted in 1st Ed of Moment in Peking autographed by author Lin Yutang.”
I did a little google search of my own for bookplate porn (I figured I couldn’t have invented the term) and uncovered this: “If there’s such a thing as bookplate porn, this gorgeous book is the ultimate,” wrote Sadie Stein in The Paris Review. She’s referring to Martin Hopkinson‘s new book on bookplates, The Art of Bookplates.
A bookplate book
From him, I learned that “bookplates originat[ed] in their modern printed form in 16th-century Germany, where books were highly valuable.” He writes:
In the early 1500s, Albrecht Dürer and other German engravers and printmakers began to create highly decorative bookplates, often featuring armorial devices and coats of arms for wealthy individuals and institutions. As the fashion for ornamental bookplates spread, distinctive national styles evolved. Nearly every conceivable design element—from cupids to scientific instruments, portraits, and landscapes—served to decorate personal bookplates. This volume explores the various sources of ex libris inspiration, including designs by C. R. Ashbee, Walter Crane, Aubrey Beardsley, Eric Gill, and Rudyard Kipling, as seen in the books of Frederic Leighton, Calvin Coolidge, and many others.
Finally in a postscript to my original post, one reader submitted this suggestion with the words: “Here is one of my favorites. How could it not be?”
The comment is from Richard Katzev.
Tags: Albrecht Dürer, Aubrey Beardsley, C. R. Ashbee, Calvin Coolidge, Elena Danielson, Eric Gill, Frederic Leighton, Lewis Carroll, Lin Yutang, Lisa Haderlie Baker, Martin Hopkinson, Mike Ross, Niu Ming-Ming, Richard Katzev, Rudyard Kipling, Sadie Stein, Toni Hofer, Walter Crane