American Book-Plates: A Guide to Their Study with Examples — Reading Notes

Armorial Absurdities and Heraldic Precision

Allen's catalog entries blend scholarly exactness with dry humor. For the plate of John Murray, he notes a shield divided into quarters colored heraldically and charged with “absurd charges”: a powder-horn, a crescent and stars, an ox-bow, a crown, and Gabriel and Apollyon in combat. The crest is a man on a prancing steed carrying a tomahawk; supporters include a nude Indian with chained feet and a crowned lion with three stars. Allen remarks, “What a pity!” that the plate is unsigned. Elsewhere, he records a plate by Hurd that had its name and signature erased and replaced with type—an “unwarrantable proceeding.” These entries show Allen balancing cataloger's rigor with a collector's relish for the odd.

Pictorial Plates and Institutional Marks

Beyond armorial designs, Allen documents pictorial plates that depict libraries, allegories, and local scenes. The Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island, used a plate showing the library building itself, drawn by James Stevens and engraved by W. D. Terry. The Apprentices' Library of New York featured a scene of an aged man in classic garb directing two youths toward a temple of knowledge on a hill, with a beehive symbolizing industry and a broken column linking to classic history. Allen notes the engraver, A. Anderson. Such entries reveal how institutions used book-plates to project identity—through architecture, allegory, or civic pride—and how Allen's descriptions preserve these visual programs.

Mottos, Mottoes, and Moral Sentiments

Allen consistently records mottoes, which range from Latin tags to English couplets. Roger Newberry's plate bears the rhyme: “To Virtue & Science attend, / And Truth & Justice befriend.” Timothy Newell's military plate, a woodcut printed by Isaiah Thomas, frames the name with flags, swords, and drums, but carries no motto. The Newburyport Athenæum uses a pictorial eagle bearing a ribbon with the institution's name. Allen's attention to mottoes—whether heraldic (Juncta virtute fides), aspirational (Cognosce occasionem), or absent—highlights how owners and institutions stamped their values onto these small labels, turning them into compressed statements of identity.

Allen's guide is best read as a reference, not a narrative. Readers interested in a particular plate can search by owner name or engraver; those curious about design trends will find patterns across entries. The book's value lies in its accumulation of detail—each motto, charge, and signature a clue to the tastes and networks of early American collectors. Approach it as a cabinet of curiosities, not a finished history.

This meticulous cataloguing of book-plates reminds me of my grandfather’s desk drawer, where I’d spend wet afternoons sorting his old ex-libris. Each crest felt like a tiny window into a stranger’s life, much like the scattered notes in Widger's Quotations from the Project Gutenberg Editions of Dumas' Celebrated Crimes — Reading Notes—fragments implying far more than they state. Both books leave that unfinished, tender ache.