Sales catalogue: George F. Kelly

Date:
1901
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/52/39
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue: George F. Kelly. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    51/60 page 43
    AMERICAN DESIGNERS of BOOK- PLATES: WM. EDGAR FISHER By W.’G. BOWDOIN who can not, have ventured into the field of book-plate designing; and the result has been that many of the book-plates that are current have little to commend them to critical observers. The present increasing interest in these little bits of the graver’s art has greatly encouraged the production of them and new ones arise daily. It is desirable, therefore, if we are to ,have book- plates at all, that they shall be as artistic as may be ; and it is important, from an art standpoint, to all those who are about to adopt the use of these marks of ownership, that they shall have, as they may have, _ the artistic flavor ' about them. oases | EX LIBRIS” Most of our leading designers have aaa SY | hitherto been grouped in the eastern sec- nhs | tion of our country, or at least not much Ae SANS) = further west than Chicago. Some few |f/ << designs, it is true, have been produced in California, but for the most part the book- plates of note have been marked with an eastern geographical origin. In William Edgar Fisher we have a designer who has strikingly departed from geographical conditions of book-plate de- signing heretofore prevailing, and in far- away Fargo, North Dakota, has set up his studio from whence have come designs that are fresh, original and very pleasing. Mr. Fisher loves to work in a pictorial field. He makes a plate that tells a story, and in his best plates there is artfully placed something bookish that harmonizes with the design-form selected; and, because of art A LMOST every one who can draw, and many WINIFRED | KNIGHT
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