Bibliophemera

My bookplate collection is small and I have not yet acquired a celebrity bookplate, so to speak. But I may have one that is an indirect brush with celebrity. Here is an ornate bookplate designed in 1933 by W.E. Osborne (of whom no information) for an Albert Clayburgh with the motto, KEEP THE OPEN MIND . But which Albert Clayburgh? As I keep an open mind about who this might be, my research keeps turning up two Albert Clayburghs--both prominent citizens of New York City in their respective days. And I have come to believe that this Albert of the ex libris is the father of actress Jill Clayburgh . I hope so because I have always liked Jill Clayburgh since first seeing her on the big screen in Silver Streak . I found this particular bookplate while going through the same batch of bookplates that produced the engraving of the Hogarth crest (later determined not to be a bookplate), which I wrote about HERE . I found Albert Clayburgh's bookplate and for some reason immediately thought o...

The old label you sometimes find pasted inside the cover of an antiquarian book is not always an ex libris, at least not the typical ownership bookplate we've become accustomed to. This label was printed in 1896 and affixed to the following book for an award presentation to an accomplished young man in grade school. Ice-World Adventures, Or, Voyages and Travels in the Arctic Regions: From the Discovery of Iceland to the English Expedition of 1875 was published by Ward, Lock, and Co. in London, circa 1876, but I'll bet even this second-hand book of some twenty years, with its ornate decorations and many engravings of Arctic adventure, was still an eye-popping prize for the young man. It would have been for me (as it was when I found it some years ago at the "young" age of 40, about 350 miles across the border in a New Hampshire village book shop). Charles Walliss attended the Elgin Street (Central) School in Ottawa, Ontario in the 1890s. He appears to have been awar...

With all the horrible news coming out of Haiti recently because of the devastating earthquake, I remembered a bit of history I learned about the country via the bookplate below. I wrote about it on another blog more than three years ago and it seemed timely to revisit it now and rework it for this blog. This is one of the more interesting bookplates I've come across in recent years. It depicts Haiti's first military force, the Gendarmerie d'Haiti , which was established in 1915 during U.S. occupation and commanded and supported by U.S. Marines. Quite likely, the previous owner of the book had been a U.S. Marine in the Gendarmerie d'Haiti during that time. I found the book at a Houston Public Library sale several years ago and, though it looks battle-worn, I bought it for the author's inscription inside and because of my interest in the subject. The book is American Ballads & Folks Songs , by John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax (Macmillan, 1934), first edition, inscrib...

This bookplate is significant for its designer and owner. Sidney L. Smith (pictured left) was a well-known engraver of the late 19th and early 20th centuries whose prolific work with bookplates warranted the book, Bookplates by Sidney L. Smith with a Check-list of the Bookplates , by Gardner Teall, published by Alfred Fowler, 1921. The bookplate's owner, Scofield Thayer, was a poet, editor, publisher, and important art collector. He came from wealth, was educated at Harvard and Oxford, and his literary lineage included an uncle, Ernest Thayer, who was famous for his beloved baseball poem, Casey at the Bat . But Thayer was probably best known for his art collection and for transforming The Dial , with his wealthy inheritance, into a premiere publication for literature and the arts in the 1920s. Much of the art featured in the magazine was from Thayer's personal collection, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Thayer associated with a Who's Who of lite...