Women Designers of Book-Plates, by Wilbur Macey Stone
New York: Published for The Triptych by Randolph R. Beam, 1902
It may be somewhat surprising to us today to find an entire volume
devoted to bookplates designed by women in the early twentieth century.
The author makes it clear in his somewhat patronizing introduction,
however, that to his mind a bookplate is comparable to "a bit
of embroidery or decoration embodying the personality of the owner," and
thus women are eminently suitable to "have at least some share
in its production.”
Helen Stratton was an English illustrator best known for her edition
of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. Her bookplate for
Joyce Woolmer shows a charming lineup of characters from fairy tales
and from Mother Goose. Her Ex Libris Bhalu Jackson immortalizes two
dogs "whose only books are people’s looks.”
The ribbon shield with bees and quotation by Henry Austin Dobson: "All
passes; art alone, enduring stays . . ." was
created by Elisabeth M. Hallowell for the library of the Plastic Club in Philadelphia,
a professional organization for women artists where the Red
Rose Girls (Elizabeth
Shippen Green, Violet Oakley, and Jesse Wilcox Smith) held their first group
exhibition in 1902.
Women Designers of Book-Plates, by Wilbur Macey
Stone. New York: Published for The Triptych by Randolph R. Beam,
1902.
Rare
Books Division, the Miriam Y. Holden Collection on the History of Women
