Bookplates are not only personal, but also fairly private. A business card exists to be given away, to provide one’s contact information to someone else. A note card’s raison d’être is to bear written communication from one person to another, usually via post. But many bookplates don’t actually go out into the world. They serve their purpose inside a book. If you lend a book, the borrower knows to whom to return it. The lender has expressed not only pride of ownership, but also perhaps his or her taste in the choice of bookplate, whether store-bought “blank,” personalized or produced from scratch.
When someone donates a book — or a collection — the bookplate both tells the recipient and all subsequent readers from whom the book(s) came, and provides some context, a glimpse of the original owner’s “readerliness.”
Many book collectors, libraries, book lovers and “just readers” have bookplates, ranging from the humble to the spectacular. I was introduced some years ago to a pair of exquisite limited-edition volumes showcasing bookplates designed by Rockwell Kent. I recently asked Michael Schwab and Jake Wien, both of whom have these books in their personal collections, what it is about the designs that appeals so much to them.
Schwab: These three are among my favorites [image panel at the top of this article: J.B. Neumann (center), Gordon Kent (far right); image panel immediately above, Katharine Brush (center)]. What has always inspired me about Rockwell Kent’s work — and turns him into a hero for me — is his storytelling. The word that comes to mind is “drama” — it’s as if he’s directing a play. His work is theater: the set, the actors and the props. Graphically, the relationship between the type and the image is very lyrical. His low point of perspective is always very effective — so often he has us looking up at these intriguing characters that he creates. The dynamics of the black ink and white space create that unique Rockwell Kentian “mood.” In my own work, I strive for a little bit of that dramatic power.
Wien: My personal favorite is Frederick Baldwin Adams’ quintessentially Kentian bookplate [image panel immediately above, far right]. Kent poetically portrays a lone soul contemplating the darkened universe by way of a shimmering star, as though it were a book emanating mysterious energy. Adams passed away in 2001, and his magnificent library went on auction in London at Sotheby’s in November of that year. Kent’s pencil sketch for the bookplate — about 2-5/8 sq. in. — achieved a price of over 2000 British pounds at the auction. Some of the books sold made their way to booksellers in the U.S., where I purchased several of lesser importance relating to the life and work of Robert Frost — for their Kent bookplates!
Notes: Wien is an independent curator and author of Rockwell Kent: The Mythic and The Modern. Wien has also written an extensive, insightful and lively review of Rockwell Kent: The Art of the Bookplate by Don Roberts. You can enjoy his complete review at the website of the American Society of Bookplate Collectors & Designers.
Kuhn: When I found this fascinating Mah-Jongg book at Odysssey bookshop in Novato, Calif., in 2007, I had recently won a series of “Ma’j” lessons. Yes, I judged the book a bit by its cover, but it was the “double devices” within that won my heart: the tiny bordered label, which I suspect was Mrs. Walter L. Dean’s address label, and then her even more petite, discreet blind-embossed seal, which you are seeing here marvelously magnified. Tout en bon heure is French for “all in good time.” I wish I could have been a flower on the wall at one of the Ma’j parties at 1640 Vallejo Street! And I wonder what Mrs. Dean would have made of me and my bookplates?
Alyson Kuhn’s bookplates were a splendid surprise from Michael Osborne Design. Michelle Regenbogen fashioned the pearl girl; Paul Kagiwada, the beribboned package; and Michael O., the ak with leaf motif. The bookplates were letterpress printed on Mohawk Superfine at One Heart Press, presented in a four-compartment box made by Kagiwada, complete with pot of aromatic Italian paste!
