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Sunday, May 8, 2011

LEFT INSIDE: Bookplate Medley

A variety of bookplates today.  The one with Tim Waters' name came from a Sax Rohmer book I got in a large lot of Rohmer books at a Missouri book auction many years ago.  Each book had his name written inside.  This plate was loosely affixed inside a Fu Manchu book and fell out over time.

As for the one in the middle:  I wonder why anyone would bother putting a bookplate in a book without bothering to fill in the blank where a name goes. Defeats the purpose, doesn't it?




7 comments:

  1. I like the one with the sunset...even though, unlike the others, there is nothing in the image itself (not counting "ex libris") to indicate books.

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  2. Takes me back to an era when a book was an object of wonder and and a prized possession, before the age of airport paperbacks and e-readers. Well, it's Monday. Everyone's grumpy on Monday.

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  3. I'm not Grumpy, I'm Sleepy. Nevermind. I can understand the bookplate-with-no-name. Since most bookplates are unique enough that friends and neighbors and others who might wish to borrow a book would have none or a different one, the bookplate itself was enough to identify the owner in most cases. I had bookplates bought from Antioch, that were preprinted with my initials, which I guess is a compromise. I never used one as an adult, but as a youngster thought they were pretty cool.

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  4. Rick -

    I won't ask about the dwarf allusion. Must refer to something on someone's blog I missed.

    I have a boxful of Antioch bookplates I found at an estate sale. I was planning to write about them when I had the time to do a little research about the company. I always sthought bookplates were cool when I was younger, too.

    Someone once gave me a book embosser as a birthday gift years ago. It had my initials and the usual "From the Library Of" circling the fancy monogram. I started to stamp all my books (only the modern ones, nothing that was vintage) until I realized that it immediately made them "unsellable" should I ever want to make some quick cash. So I stopped personalizing my books. Now that embosser sits in a drawer somewhere completely forgotten and abandoned. Since then I've never been fond of marking or personalizing my books in any way.

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  5. I too thought bookplates were pretty cool; that is until I realized that in using them I was devaluing my collection. Besides, it was all vanity - can't even remember the last time someone asked to borrow a book.

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  6. I love these. I recently found some of my older books with my old bookplate in them - from my married days. Tried to scratch them out. HA! I love the whole idea of book plates even if they do hurt the value of first/firsts.

    I've been meaning to do a post on vintage bookplates. There really are some lovely examples out there.

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  7. The dwarf line was following the previous comment's last line by Carol.

    I had a book embosser also, and used it a few times until I had the same realization.

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