Modern book-plates and their designers : being the Winter number of the Stvdio.

Date:
1898-1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Modern book-plates and their designers : being the Winter number of the Stvdio. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    BY E. SENaoUGH RICKETTS Mr. Robert Halls, so far, has only been known by one—a design for Herbert Drew—a grotesquely weird nude baby peeping over a pile of books; but a study for another, here reproduced, may be evidence that he intends to enter the field in earnest. Mr. T. R. Way, whose lithographs of Old London and the Thames are well known, has drawn a few plates on the stone which betray not only his mastery of the craft, but also a pretty and ingenious fancy. They include designs for T. H., A. Lazarus, Louisa Adelaide Way, Henry Edward Morgan, Mary Helen Way, Eleanor Gertrude Cross, Frederick Palmer, Arthur Thomas Way, Olive Cox, and T. R. Way. Mr. J. D. Batten was one of the earliest of our younger illustrators to take an interest in the ex libris. Several of his designs have been repro- duced in Castle's English Book-plates. One of the first, ex libris Thornhurst, bears a facsimile of its owner's autograph below. Joseph Tanner is dated 1887, and a circular device dated 1889 bears a blank place presumably intended for the owner's signature [Money Coutts]. He has also designed 32 a beautiful photogravure plate for H. B. Tail (1892); another by the same process; and an admirable heraldic composition with the legend Ex libris Michaelis Tomkinson, Franche Hall, Worcestershirer Plates for H. Morley Fletcher, Grege Johannis Piatt, R. H. Porter, Percival Smith, H. B. Tail Jacobi B. Winterbotham (1886), are also recorded in Mr. H. W. Fincham's catalogue. All the above show, as might be expected, no little of the artistic charm which marks Mr. Batten's work, while the Tait (1892) design is quite one of the most beautiful of modern plates. Mr. Alan Wright seems to have been devoting his attention to other illustrations of late. Yet his early designs are Avell known and prized by collectors of modern plates, for their fancy as well as for their art. The plates known to collectors include examples for himself, a tiny monogram he uses as his signature on drawings, for Ranken Ellis, Emily Coldwell, H. A. Wright, Marion L. Leigh, James Ransome Corder, Fred. E. Wright, A. G. Wright (two), Florence Campbell, Ethel M. Boyce, Richard BY E. BENGOUGH RICKETTS