American Book-Plates. Allen Charles Dexter

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СКАЧАТЬ the Wentworth plate; every feature is markedly better, the water still flows out of the scallop shell, the same shaped shield is used and the motto is placed upon a graceful ribbon with ends which run off into fancy foliations. The name is neat in appearance, but still there are too many scrolls.

      In the plate of Robert Hale of Beverly, the old festoon of cloth noticed in the Holyoke plate is seen again, and no motto is given. The name is fairly well engraved.

      Later developments of this style are seen in the plates of Henry Marchant, Danforth, Nathaniel Tracy, and John Marston; in these some of the features of the former are wanting, but they are evidently a legitimate progeny in the matter of style.

      Another, and without doubt the highest type of the Chippendale plate which Hurd made, is seen in the John Chandler, Jr., the Dana, the Philip Dumeresque, the Vassall, and the Wilson plates. In these the shield becomes larger, the whole scheme of decoration shows more fine detail work, and the effect is lighter, more graceful, and seems at once the work of a master. The names are engraved in large bold type, with a characteristic dash after the last period.

      In the Jacobean style, the earliest of Hurd’s work is undoubtedly the Lewis De Blois. This is crude in workmanship, not very good in drawing, but excellent in design, and faithful to the characteristics of the style; the shield is placed against a frame which is lined with the regulation fish-scale pattern; the sides are richly foliated, the mantling is profuse and very well drawn, and the name is placed upon a fringed curtain which is tied up at the ends with ribbon.

      The handsomest Jacobean plates by Hurd are the Robert Jenkins, the Spooner, and the Andrew Tyler. In the former the lining is diapered, the scroll work at the side of the arms is very fine, and at the bottom, under the shield, a small vignette of a ship under full sail is very pretty. At the top of the scrolls on either side two turbanded female heads peer at each other across the crest.

      In the Tyler plate the frame is very similar to the Jenkins, the lining is diapered, and the scroll at the side are the same. The little vignette at the bottom, however, is displaced by a sour face with gray hair. The two faces are replaced by urns filled with flowers, and the old cloth festoon is draped below the whole design. The Spooner plate bears no resemblance to the others, and is a more graceful design. The lining is latticed, the Sphinx head under the shield is enclosed within a frame of its own, and at either side are term figures from whose hands depend bouquets of flowers; the crest is overarched with a bit of the old scallop shell, and the motto is on a ribbon, which, wholly unsupported, maintains a curved position under the frame.

      The Jacobean plates of Benjamin Greene and Peter R. Livingston are almost identical in design; the small frame which encloses the shield is lined with the fish-scale pattern, the mantling is handsome and profuse, and the motto ribbon is stretched in rather stiff manner below the frame.

      Only two examples of the Ribbon and Wreath style are known as Hurd’s work, the John C. Williams and the Jonathan Jackson. These are both signed, and are very similar in design. Garlands of roses depending from rings above follow closely the outline of the heart-shaped shield, and the ribbon for the motto is placed beneath, and is ornamented with fancy ends.

      In the “detur” plate for Harvard College Hurd conformed to the English manner and adopted the seal-shaped design. The arms are displayed upon a heart-shaped shield which is enclosed within a circle which bears the name and motto, and this again is enclosed by a wreath of holly branches.

      Hurd’s work is the most interesting found in our early days, and a study of it shows him to have been progressive as well as painstaking. The Ribbon and Wreath style did not come into general use in England until about 1770, yet Hurd, who died in 1777, had used it. The colonies could not be expected to adopt the new styles of the old country immediately, and the condition of things from 1770 on to the time of Hurd’s death was not such as to encourage the introduction of “fads” or to allow much time for the development of the fine arts.

      A word must be said about the heraldry on Hurd’s book-plates. This science, heraldry, was not held in such general esteem among the New Englanders as it was further south, and while many of the governors and men of high standing in the Northern colonies brought armorial seals with them, a great many who used them did so without strict heraldic authority, and when it became the fashion to use coats-of-arms in various ways, the herald painters of those days, who had but slight knowledge of heraldry and who were possessed of a copy of Guillim or some other writer on the subject, would find therein the arms of some family bearing the name of their prospective customer, and without further research would proceed to produce the coat as described. Not always were these arms so ordered correctly borne; indeed, there is much uncertainty about the arms used after about 1730 when our native engravers and painters took up the work of producing arms upon orders. Such seals as were brought by the colonists from England, and such as were used by their descendants are undoubtedly correct, but the questionable arms are those which, as mentioned above, were looked up in this country only, by means of such heraldic works as were at hand. The presence of the arms then on some book-plates cannot be relied upon as sufficient and indisputable proof of their owners’ right to them.

      A list of the book-plates signed by Hurd is appended.

      Of James Akin, who signs the Coffin and Browne plates, nothing is learned. The Hector Coffin book-plate is also signed by Francis Kearney, which would seem to indicate that Akin was associated with him. The Browne is a Philadelphia plate, and Akin may have been employed by the firm of Tanner, Vallance, Kearney and Company, which was in successful operation in Philadelphia for some years.

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      S. Allardice was apprenticed to Robert Scott, who had been a pupil of Robert Strange, and who, coming to America, was made die-sinker to the Mint. He had previously made the architectural plates for Dobson’s Encyclopædia.

      Only one example of the book-plate work of Allardice is now at hand, and that is simply an engraved label for the Library Company of Baltimore. Ornamented with flourishes, and some fancy work, it is yet of no merit as a book-plate or an example of art.

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      Alexander Anderson, who was the first American wood-engraver, was born in the city of New York, April 21, 1775, and lived to the advanced age of ninety-five years, dying, in 1870, in Jersey City, N.J., on the 17th of February.

      At the age of twelve, with the spring of a pocket-knife, sharpened for the purpose, he tried to engrave on copper pennies rolled thin. In this way he made his first plate, which was a head of Paul Jones; and his first impression from it was made in red oil paint by a rude kind of a press of his own contrivance. With tools made by a blacksmith, he went on to cut little ships and houses on type metal for the newspapers. Being in some way led to take an interest in certain medical works, he copied many of the plates, and his father, feeling that this was a true sign of his fitness for the profession of medicine, and not discerning the talent for engraving, placed him with Dr. Joseph Young, as a student of medicine.

      This step was taken with great reluctance by the youth; but he found time for both the cares of his new study, and for the pleasures of his old pastime. Various successes encouraged him, and in 1793 he cut a tobacco-stamp on wood, which appears to have been his first use of that material. Soon after this, he obtained a copy of Bewick’s “Quadrupeds,” and with the cuts found therein he was delighted. They had a strong influence upon his later work, and he has been well called the “American Bewick,” for his small wood-cuts closely resemble those of the English master in design, and his prominence in this country was equal to Bewick’s in England.

      A life of Dr. Anderson has lately СКАЧАТЬ