Polish ex libris

I haven't featured a bookplate, or ex libris, here in a good while, but here's one for which I have more questions than information to share.


Henryka Raczyniewskiego was either a noteworthy Polish collector of ex libris or a collectible illustrator of ex libris. His collection, of which category I'm not certain, resides now in the Nicolaus Copernicus University Library's new Digital Library in ToruĊ„, Poland: Kujawsko-Pomorska Biblioteka Cyfrowa. From the information presented, I can't answer the collector/illustrator question.

The library's collections available thus far seem an impressive start for assembling ephemera representative of Polish culture and history, including the ex libris collection where I found the scant bit of information available on Raczyniewskiego. Presently, that's all the information I can find about him. Hopefully, someone more knowledgeable will have additional information to share.

As to whether he was a collector or an illustrator, I think he just may have been both.

That he may have collected books is evident by a recent find in my backlog of books--the 1922 book, Nurnberg, by Paul Johannes Ree (E.A. Seeman, Leipzig). And partially affixed to the heavily foxed front free endpaper, I found Henryka Raczyniewskiego's own ex libris, as shown at the beginning of this post.

Did Raczyniewskiego the illustrator (and perhaps collector) design his own ex libris or was it designed for Raczyniewskiego the collector by another illustrator?


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