No. 187 Autumn 1999

The Renaissance of Copper-Engraved Bookplates in Britain [ continued from here ]

Frank George House was Barrett's counterpart at the Knightsbridge stationers Trustlove & Hanson, and he employed Harrison, Eve, George Taylor Friend, Henry J. Haley, JG Potts, Alfred Sparkes, FH Tebay and probably others - like Bumpus anonymously - and seems to have had a close hand in design. Determining which engraver produced what and for whom is by no means always easy, but George Heath Viner produced checklists for Sherborn and Eve, the writer has documented Harrison and Osmond's work, and Philip Beddingham served Friend similarly. George Taylor Friend (1881 - 1969) taught at the Central School in Holborn and from 1912 had his own workshop in Holborn, where he engraved over 500 ex-libris of high quality during the course of over half a century. Some of his work was for Smythsons, the distinguished Bond Street stationers who still accept bookplate commissions (Fig. 5).

Friend's pupil Leo Wyatt likewise carried on the armorial tradition with distinction. Lord Badeley was an amateur etcher of bookplates, but his compositions can be of unequal quality, unlike the small number of magnificent armorials by Stephen Gooden, which included the Windsor Castle series of three for King George VI and Her Majesty the Queen. Gooden and Badeley were probably always freelance, however.

Without a doubt we owe a debt of gratitude to top London stationers and booksellers etc, for the full flowering of the heraldic bookplate's renaissance in Britain during the last century. There are several copper-engravers still producing ex-libris, including the excellent Stanley Reece, but it is nevertheless a much diminished phenomenon. Copper engraving is scarcely taught in schools nowadays; it is a time-consuming and therefore costly procedure; and the amount of money people are prepared to spend on a bookplate decreases. What I see as the College of Arms' tradition of process-produced plates is sound heraldically, but one could wish for a little less chastity of design and more exuberance, not least in the matter of mantling. As I've tried to show, today's practitioners do need to look far back for the sort of inspiration that could be transforming.

Brian North Lee FSA