BOOKPLATE, a printed or engraved label, usually decorative, placed on the inside cover of a book as the owner's symbol. In a certain sense, any individualized label is en titled to the name; but as usually understood, the term is restricted to those with some spe cial artistic design, which, however, may range from the simplest to the most elaborate and ornate composition. The elements are—the owner's name; his coat of arms if he has one, usually, but not invariably; allegorical em blems or compositions; landscape designs; mottoes; quotations, etc. In purpose they are probably very ancient: some of the small tab lets found in Assyrian libraries are intelligible only as book-plates, and they are accredited to Japan in the 10th century. Our modern book-plates, however, are of German descent and seem to have been nearly contemporaneous with printing, one being mentioned as of the mid-15th century; the earliest actually known, however, is a hand-colored heraldic wood-cut of about 1480, in some books and manuscripts presented to the monastery of Buxheim, Swa bia. The earlier ones were all mere indices of ownership, rough wood-cuts with no artistic design; they were permanently raised into the domain of an art by the great Albrecht Diirer (1471-1528), the of the book-plate.) He made two for Bilibald Pirckheimer, prob ably before 1503—one a mixture of armorial and allegorical elements and the other a large bold portrait of the famous Nuremberg sena tor; but his earliest dated one is for Hierony mus Ebner of the same city, in 1516. Several of the great German artists of that age — Hol bein, Cranach, Amman and others — designed book-plates; since Diirer's time the best have not disdained this branch of art and wealthy collectors have vied with each other in costly designs.
The idea was soon adopted in other Euro pean countries. The French wrought with great delicacy and beauty, but with too elabo rate and profuse decoration. The English were very late in adopting the fashion: the number of examples which have conic down from be fore the Restoration is singularly few and the first engraved one we possess is that of Sir Nicholas Bacon, father of the chancellor, dated 1574; though an old folio volume from Henry VIII's library, now in the British Museum, contains an elaborately emblazoned drawing which formed the book-plate of Cardinal Wolsey, with his arms, supporters and car dinal's hat. But after the Restoration they
multiply so rapidly that owing to the great number of wealthy English collectors, they far outnumber all the rest of the world and some of them have considerable historical in terest. Pepys had several, one with initials and crossed anchors probably as early as 1668, one with his portrait not earlier than 1685. Among other English names highly prized by book-plate collectors may be mentioned Bishop Burnet, William Penn, Robert Harley, Mat thew Prior, Lawrence Sterne, David Garrick, Horace Walpole, John Wilkes and Charles James Fox. Among the artists who have en graved them are William Marshall and Robert White, Hogarth, Bartolozzi, Bewick and Ver tue. Bewick at one time was regularly em ployed in their production. One of the prettiest of book-plates is that designed in 1793 by Agnes Berry for the Hon. Mrs. Damer and engraved by Francis Legat.
The style of design, naturally, has varied with the taste of the age and is no mean index of its characteristics. The chief English styles have been classified by Lord de Tabley, the leading modern authority, as follows: Early English, entirely armorial, with profuse mant ling and large full-rounded curves surround ing three and often four sides of the shield; Jacobean, from about the time of James II to 1745, with a heavy carved appearance, an even balance of proportions, always a regular out line and often a carved molding around it which makes a massive rectangular frame — a dignified and reposeful if rather formal style. The Chippendale succeeded, lighter and more graceful, with rich curves and airy scrolls, the helmet gone, no set form of shield and a pro fusion of careless sprays and garlands, etc. This degenerated with poor artists into an in congruous mass of overdone and rococo orna mentation, a heap of all the unrelated objects of nature and art and the most artificial ties of design, portraits and castles and ruined abbeys, Watteau shepherdesses and shepherds, lambs and dragons, dogs and ships, etc. About 1770 came in the Ribbon and Wreath, with a shield decorated as the name implies, much simpler and more tasteful.