American Book-Plates. Allen Charles Dexter

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      Till thou at length art free,

      Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea.’ ”

      A plain armorial plate with the motto, Vitam impendere vero, and the name in fac-simile of his autograph, was used by J. G. Holland.

      The plate of Brander Matthews, designed by Edwin A. Abbey, represents the discovery of a mask of the old Greek comedy by an American Indian. With feathers stuck in his scanty hair, and his tomahawk laid on the ground beside him, he appears to deliberate upon the possible use of the enormous face which grins at him from his knee. On a circular frame surrounding this picture the following words from Molière are given, Que pensez vous de cette comedie. The appropriateness of the design is apparent for one who is a collector of the literature of the French drama, and the author of several books relating to the stage both in America and France.

      In the plate of Edmund Clarence Stedman, the author of “The Poets of America,” we see Pan piping in the sylvan glades; the shepherd and the nymph are charmed by the music, and the god is apparently at the height of his effort. The frame surrounding the design bears the words, Le Cœur au Metier, which were suggested by the address of Matthew Arnold to the Authors’ Club in 1883. This plate is made in three sizes.

      The plate of Thomas Bailey Aldrich presents within a square frame a picture of a black bird resting upon a comic mask; the heavy panelled frame bears the owner’s name and the words, His Mark. In his essay on American Book-plates, Mr. Laurence Hutton questions whether this black bird is representative of the Daw, and symbolic of Margery of that name.

      In the plate of Eugene Field we have a beautiful example of the plain armorial, unaccompanied by motto or ornamentation of any kind.

      Of similar character is the plate of Richard Grant White. This is armorial, but the motto, The right and sleep, is given, and the shield is decorated in a conventional manner, with mantling and scrolls.

      A pleasing library interior is used by Arlo Bates. This represents an Oriental interior; a youth in scull-cap and flowing hair is reading a large book; a lily stem rises from a vase of striped Tyrian glass at his side; rows of books are seen at his back; and out of the arched window the distant fields are seen, with the palm and cypress trees on the hillside. This plate is produced in a new manner, being a gelatine print or half-tone direct from the pencil sketch. It preserves a very soft and pleasant effect; indeed, one feels sure it will smirch if rubbed.

       Laurence Hutton in his plate places a full-length statue of Thackeray within a canopy, which seems to be a niche within a book-case. Volumes flank both sides, and the amiable face of the drastic writer looks directly at the beholder. The name of the owner is given on a ribbon at the bottom of the design.

      The books of the lamented actors, Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett, were marked with book-plates, the former using a plain armorial with no name engraved upon it, and the latter showing the mask of Tragedy upon an open volume, with the motto, Esto quod esse videris.

      The reading monk, with the nimbus and star over his head, is seen in the plate of Edward Eggleston. The sentiment, Flie fro’ the presse and dwell with sothfastnesse, is given in old English letters.

      Mr. Rossiter Johnson uses a very plain but effective label bearing the initials R. J. printed within a plain ruled border: all in red ink.

      The patriotic motto of General Winfield Scott is the family motto of the Scots of Whitislaid, Scotland, and well did the character of the man who used the book-plate depicted below coincide with its meaning.

      It would be interesting to extend this list of plates used by men well known throughout the length and breadth of our land, but, unfortunately, many whose names will occur to the reader do not use a book-plate.

      EARLY AMERICAN BOOK-PLATE ENGRAVERS

      NATHANIEL HURD, who was born in Boston, Feb. 13, 1730, and who died in 1777, was the best of our early engravers of book-plates. Very little is now known of him, the principal source of information being an article in the third volume of “The New England Magazine,” published in Boston in 1832 by J. T. and E. Buckingham. The only known portrait of Hurd, which is copied from an original painting of him by Copley, and which in 1832 was owned by a descendant of Hurd in Medford, Mass., also accompanies this article, and shows him as a young man with smooth face, very pleasing and intelligent features, and wearing a cap, white neck-cloth, and clothes of a pattern which give him a decidedly clerical appearance.

      The only book-plate work mentioned in this article is the large plate for Harvard College. It is said that the prints done in red ink were for use in the highly valuable books which the students were not allowed to take from the library. Several brilliant caricatures, a portrait of the Rev.

      Dr. Sewell of the Old South Church, done in 1764, and a few other examples of his art are mentioned. He is (probably inaccurately) claimed to be the first person who undertook to engrave on copper in the United States. He was a man of natural talent and real genius, was self-instructed in his art, and was regarded as the foremost seal-cutter and die-engraver of his time, in this country.

      The following advertisement from the Boston “Gazette” of April 28, 1760, is of some interest: —

      “Nathaniel Hurd Informs his Customers he has remov’d his shop from Maccarty’s Corner on the Exchange to the Back Part of the opposite Brick Building, where Mr. Ezekiel Price kept his Office, where he continues to do all Sorts of Goldsmiths Work. Likewise engraves in Gold, Silver, Copper, Brass, and Steel, in the neatest Manner, and at reasonable Rate.”

      Hurd worked principally in the Chippendale style; he made some plates in the Jacobean and a few in the Ribbon and Wreath styles, but he died before the latter was much in use, and the former was really going out when he took up the making of plates. Judging from the appearance of his work, his first attempts were in the Chippendale style, and the few Jacobeans he made were done after he had attained considerable efficiency.

      One of his earliest specimens was undoubtedly the plate of Edward Augustus Holyoke, the famous doctor of Boston, who lived to be one hundred years old, and who was but a year or two the senior of Hurd. In this plate he used a design which he evidently believed he could improve upon, and in which he felt there were good features, for we find a number of future plates of very similar design but much better execution. In the Holyoke plate the work is very crude, the lines are stiff, the drawing is poor, and the lettering of the motto and name are not good. An ugly scroll is placed under the name, and the festoon of cloth which is draped at the bottom of the frame and around the motto ribbon is especially poor; the shell at the base of the escutcheon which figures so often in future plates is here used, and the queer little flow of water from it would not be recognized as such were this the only specimen in which it occurs; the arrangement of the rose sprays, the form of the shield, and the employment of the shelly edge show a thorough study of the elements of this style. Very likely this design was copied in great part from some foreign example which had come into his possession.

      In the Thomas Dering plate, which is the earliest plate dated and signed by an American engraver, this same design is improved upon; it is more compact in appearance, a little freer in execution, and the drawing is improved. The name is still not very well engraved, and top-heavy flourishes weigh down the capitals.

      In the Theodore Atkinson plate the same design is still further improved upon; the flow of water from the scallop shell is here caught in a little bowl, a little additional flowery ornamentation is added, and the heraldic drawing is better. The name is again embellished with graceless flourishes.

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