Bookplate collecting is a serious endeavor which is normally
undertaken by serious collectors. I don’t consider myself a serious collector
of bookplates so it is surprising that I have made 18 previous posts to this
blog with the label “bookplates” (this one makes 19). I have also ended up with
a fairly significant collection of bookplates for institutional libraries (as
opposed to personal libraries). I added a major addition to that collection last
year when I purchased an album of over 300 bookplates from a dealer at a stamp
show. The dealer who knew about my
interest in library history had previously offered to sell the album to me, but
the price was more than I was willing to pay. He finally got tired of lugging
the album around and made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse. The album
includes only part of someone’s former collection. The bookplates are for
libraries starting with A and going through libraries starting with M. The bookplates are tipped or pasted into the
album and I still need to safely remove them. Most of the bookplates are unused
and were probably acquired by exchange with libraries or other collectors. The
image of the page from the album for the Bangor (ME) Public Library shown above
is indicative of that approach. A few of the bookplates in the album were
removed from books. A bookplate from the library of the Bureau of Statistics
and Labor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, also shown above, is an example
of those bookplates. The Massachusetts bookplate was added to the library on April 2,
1906. I have no clue who compiled this
collection of bookplates, but it is a fair assumption that it was a librarian. I
previously obtained a collection of library bookplates that was assembled by
Essae Martha Culver who was executive secretary of the Louisiana Library
Commission and later Louisiana State Librarian.
Some examples from the Culver collection are located HERE. It is always
nice to make a connection with a previous or current collector of librariana.
No comments:
Post a Comment