American Book-Plates: A Guide to Their Study with Examples. Charles Dexter Allen
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AMERICAN BOOK-PLATES.
INTRODUCTORY.
The larger part of our books came from England, and very few plates are found with arms of other nationalities. The colonists who came from England bringing books, brought also the home ideas concerning books, and the book-plate was a natural piece of property to acquire. Their descendants, who continued the connection with the mother-country, used plates more generally, and the fashion spread naturally. It never became very general, but was confined to those of gentle birth; the clergy, the lawyers, and men of education. We shall see that it was not confined to the men alone, but that the women of literary accomplishments also used plates.
By far the greater part of the plates are cut on copper, but there are some woodcuts as will be seen in an examination of the list; also, there are some which look as if cut in silver, which was an easier metal to work, or perhaps in type-metal. One example is known in which brass was used, and this old plate is now in the possession of the writer. The steel engravings are of rather recent date; and while there are a number of these, the new plates are mostly on copper. The simple labels are printed from type.
The larger part of our early plates are armorial in character; and while heraldry forms so prominent and important a feature, it is left practically untouched in the present volume. The number interested in the science is small, the authorities on coats-of-arms and on blazoning differ, and the present writer had not the time to make the thorough investigation necessary to a satisfactory treatment of this interesting branch. Upon consultation with other collectors, and with their advice, it was decided to leave this subject for a future volume should any call for it arise.
A decided difference is noticed between the book-plates of the Northern and the Southern Colonies. In the South, to which came men of wealth and leisure with cultivated tastes, we would expect to find the little superfluities and niceties of daily life sooner in vogue and more generally used. Bringing books and musical instruments with them, retaining their connection with the far-away home by correspondence and visits, sending their sons to the great Universities to be educated, and to the Law Schools for a finishing course, and ordering their clothes, books, furniture, and all of the luxuries of life from England, they would naturally be the first to use the book-plate. Very few of the Southern plates were engraved by American engravers. They were nearly all done in London, when some member of the family was over, or by order from the Colony; for this reason the Southern plates are better in heraldry, design, and execution than those of New England and New York. They were the product of men experienced in such work; they were all armorial and in the prevailing English mode.
The earliest comers to New England had a prejudice against coats-of-arms and trinkets of such-like character, which their descendants, however, soon forgot. Pride of ancestry and love of the display of aristocratic claims developed when the hard circumstances of the former years had worn off, and we find the prominent families of the North using book-plates, and having their arms upon their coaches. In one important feature, however, these Northern plates differ from the Southern—they are mostly the work of our native engravers, very few being done in England.
The work of these native artisans, who were mostly self-taught in this art of engraving on copper, is confessedly inferior to that of the London experts found upon the Southern plates, both in drawing and execution, but their work is of more value to the collector from this very fact of their being American work. They furnish examples of native skill, both in engraving and in copper-plate printing.
The ornamentation of buttons, spoons, tableware, and other articles of silver was already practised when the demand for the book-plate arose, so that there were skilful men ready to turn their attention to this new branch of their art.
The War of the Revolution naturally affected the native production of book-plates, but a few years after its close, when Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were active in publishing books, the engraver found work more plenty, and very many who were employed upon the plates for the illustration of books also produced book-plates.
Nathaniel Hurd was the principal engraver of book-plates in the North before the war, though Thomas Johnson, who was born before him and who also died before he did, made some plates, while Turner and Paul Revere were also working at this period.
Henry Dawkins, in Philadelphia, came over from England, and so did the elder Maverick, who made so many plates for the New Yorkers.
The literary plates are smaller in number than we could wish, and they do not show a wide range of ideas either. Very probably some of the designs were borrowed from English plates, and were produced over again for different customers, or were freely copied by other engravers who liked, or who found customers who liked, the design of others. The plate used by George Goodwin is one of four of this same design. The shelf of books is also seen in the plate of G. C. M. Roberts, M.D., Thomas Robbins, and the
Elijah F. Reed, which is a direct reproduction of the Robbins. Piles of books, but not the regulation “Book-pile,” are seen in the Brown and Lewis plates, while the only real library interiors are the Tayloe plate, the Moral Library and the Village Library (Farmington, Conn.). John Allan, the old-book lover of New York, used a plate with an open book against an anchor, and the plate of Edmund Penn shows a love for books in the dainty volumes disposed about the frame.
The patriotism of our book-lovers is shown in very many designs, which use the American flag or the eagle. The thirteen stars also, the motto of the United States, and various private mottoes of a very patriotic nature, are frequently used.
It is noticeable that as compared with the Southern plates there are but few of the Northern examples which give the address or residence of the owner; that is, speaking of the armorial plates, the printed name labels give these particulars quite often.