Bookplate for a Bookplate Collector

This is the bookplate for Clare Ryan Talbot (1899-1981), an avid collector of bookplates, who devoted her professional life to collecting, appraising, selling, writing, and researching bookplates. She also ventured into allied enterprises with bookselling, antiques, and publishing—each incorporating bookplates into the mix.

This bookplate was reserved for her books about California only, as she noted in pencil on the back of the bookplate. Below that note, she also translated the Spanish above the illustration on the front, “La Candela del Señor” to “Candles of the Lord.” Her bookplate was engraved by James Elwood Webb (1884-1940), a Los Angeles artist and owner of an engraving and stationery shop, who painted in addition to designing and engraving bookplates.

Interestingly, another Californian, Margaret Ely Webb (1877–1965) has been linked with James Webb as the designer of a bookplate residing in a collection at Kent State University’s Special Collections and Archives Library (Ione K. Weichel Bookplate Collection). She is listed as the designer of a bookplate for Muriel Alderman, while James Webb is listed as the engraver. She was an American illustrator, printmaker, and bookplate artist, per her Wikipedia page, but no relation to James Webb is noted. She lived most of her life in Santa Barbara, California and was part of the Arts and Crafts movement of the early 1900s. 

Her papers were donated to the Archives and Special Collections of the University of Connecticut. Quoting from their brief biography of her:

“Throughout her life, she operated various shops, including Clare's Collector's Books, Wind River Bill Antiques, and Clare's Curiosity Shop: "Antiques and Books About Them", in which she sold bookplates, rare and specialty books, and antiques. She was also the director of the Hilprand Press, which was established in order to publish works about bookplates and bibliographies of bookplate literature.

She wrote a number of different articles and also wrote and delivered several lectures regarding the subject of bookplates. She was the books editor of Western Collector magazine, book reviews editor for Silver Magazine, and contributed regularly to Antiques Journal and several other periodicals. Aside from these shorter pieces, she wrote two published books: In Quest of the Perfect Bookplate (1933) and Historic California in Bookplates (1936; republished 1983). She also wrote several manuscripts for books that were never published, including "Six Centuries of the Bookplate", "Pacific Bookplates", and "Bookplates of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence".

Clare was a founding member of the Society of Ex-Libris Historians, and was a member of a number of different societies about bookplates and other related subjects, including the Bookplate Association International, California Bookplate Society, The American Society of Bookplate Collectors and Designers, and the American Society of Heraldry. In recognition of her various achievements and contributions to bookplate literature and collecting, she was included in the Who's Who in the West, Who's Who of American Women (3rd edition, 1964-1965), World Who's Who of Women (4th edition, 1978), and the International Blue Book (Who's Who in the World, 1943).”