Читать книгу On the Processes for the Production of Ex Libris (Book-Plates) онлайн

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Some account of these two older methods and their later developments, as well as a sketch of some of the modern processes arising out of the invention of lithography and photography, will be of interest to collectors of Ex Libris; particularly the process blocks so much in vogue at the present time for high-class book illustrations, magazines, the illustrated weeklies, etc., by means of which the artist’s drawing, through a happy union of these later arts and chemical science, may be translated into a printing surface of metal or other material for giving off impressions by the type press, the copper-plate press, by lithography, or by one of the photo-mechanical processes, such as calotype, etc. By reference to representative examples, it is hoped to enable the collector to form a pretty accurate idea of the mode of execution of similar works.

Whatever merit of originality or of fancy the earlier examples may possess, it is interesting to observe how largely book-plates partake of the prevailing style or fashion of the times. By this test alone, collectors are led almost to a certainty to fix an approximate date when they were designed and engraved. Again, how clearly the character of the artist appears upon the face of each example, whether he was a “base mechanick” at his trade, or a true artist, who lent his thought and skilful hand to embellish the library of his friend or client. The artist himself, in old times, generally a versatile many-sided man, adapted himself to his work and wrought out his ideas con amore in whatever direction he might be called upon, whether it was to paint some great picture, to draw and perhaps engrave on wood or copper some of his immortal conceptions, or it may be only a simple book-plate for his friend and patron. Such a man was Albrecht Dürer. A book-plate by him, cut on wood, for his friend, Bilibaldi Pirckheimer, forms the frontispiece to the Hon. Leicester Warren’s book on “The Study of Book-plates.” Men like Michael Angelo, who could vary his occupation to every phase of Art, now as an architect, conceiving and carrying out the erection of the great Church of St. Peter’s at Rome, painting the grandest and most sublime pictures, and in sculpture without a rival, but who could also bring his lofty mind to the consideration of works of less importance. To him, to Hans Holbein, and others of highest rank as artists, we are indebted for the immense advancement of the fine arts at this period, which, starting with the Renaissance of Literature and Art in the 15th and 16th centuries, gradually dispersed the darkness of the middle ages. Drawing and engraving on wood were brought to a high degree of perfection, and a race of artists was educated, who devoted themselves exclusively to illustrating books which the recently invented art of printing had called into requisition.