Books: BookPlates

Sooner or Later You Get Them

It begins by somebody saying: ” Why don’t you have a bookplate— you have such a lot of books.”

You think: “Why, yes—I guess I will.” You remember, vaguely, bookplates you have known—heavy engravings of armorial bearings in large volumes bound in calf—cute, little bookplates, nauseatingly quaint, with florid mock-Old-English lettering, ” From among Ye Bookes of Cleo. S. Eiswasser “—sentences written with a damp pencil on the title pages of schoolbooks (“If my name you wish to see—,” “If this book should chance to roam,” etc.)— and shudder. Then, perhaps, you happen to go to such an exhibition of bookplates as was recently held at the New York Public Library, and realize that there is a whole world of bookplates and bookplate-collectors in which you are the most ignorant of novices.

There are bookplates that are really designed to adorn a page, not to squat upon it like a nuisance; bookplates that have some genuine connection both with the books they rest in and the owners of those books; pleasant, interesting, engaging, individual bookplates. You sigh, and resolve to have one made.

You discover that there are a number of artists as well known in this tiny, individual field as Valentino and Talmadge are to cinema fans. Perhaps you are able to afford one of the Valentines of the bookplate world — perhaps Cousin Letty offers to do it for a Christmas present. At any rate, sooner or later you have your bookplates and spend long, gummy evenings putting them in the books.

Then your wife (husband) has a bookplate. Then it would be so nice to have separate bookplates for the children. Aunt Hepzibah, Grandmother (something nice and quiet for Grandmother), Cousin Ed (crossed flasks over a copy of The Sheik would really be best for Cousin Ed) — all join in the merry throng. Bookplates solve your Christmas present list for a year with only one comeback — the bookplate full of Greek statuary you sent by mistake to the friends who believe that Art should be draped. Then you begin comparing notes with others on their bookplates — collecting bookplates, even — and you are in the toils of a mania as rabid as that of the first edition collector, and will never get away.

Not that one wishes to disparage bookplates. Far from it. A fitting bookplate, for some reason, makes a book peculiarly one’s own. Astute bookplate makers might do well to organize a “Buy a Bookplate Week” even if it has to compete with all the “Eat-a-Pomegranate-a-Day Week’s” and “Buy a New Pair of Earmuffs a Year Week’s” there are in the modern year. S. V. B.