Maine Memory Network

This bookplate is Elizabeth Mast Hyatt's own plate, a simple design featuring a lamp or torch, with her name and the date.

The phrase "Ex Libris," which means from the books of, or from the library of, became emblematic of bookplates, and was included in many bookplate designs.

The artist and engraver, Walter M. Aikmen, was based in Brooklyn, New York, Hyatt's winter residence. Adjacent to his name is the Latin word "fecit," meaning "he made it."

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This design for Walter M. Aikman's own bookplate is more typical of his work than the plate he designed for Elizabeth Hyatt.

It shows a detailed landscape with a pond, swan and human figure surrounded by an elaborate frame.

The Latin inscription "Sub Robore Virtus" translates as "Virtue Under Strength."

Charles Dexter Allen was a prominent bookplate collector who was known for his writings on the subject, including American Bookplates: A Guide to Their Study with Examples, published in 1894.

Bookplates were not only pasted into the fronts of books to identify the owner, but were considered unique, small works of art worthy of collecting.

Allen corresponded with Elizabeth Hyatt, for a number of years, giving her advice on bookplates and bookplate collecting.

In a 1925 letter to Hyatt, Allen wrote, "The most sought for plates here are the works of the late E.D. French." This bookplate of Allen's was engraved by French in 1899.

The text includes a partial quotation from Robert Louis Stevenson: "To be honest, to be kind...", the phrase "Club of Odd Volumes," and the designation "Ex Libris Society."

Edwin Davis French (1851-1906) began as an engraver on silver, but turned to bookplates and completed around 250 plates for American and European collectors.

His work was influenced by Durer, and he developed an ornate style, in this case including an elaborate frame of acanthus leaves.

Iphigene Ochs was the daughter of Adolph Ochs, publisher of the New York Times. Her husband, Arthur Sulzberger, worked at the newspaper, and became publisher after his father-in-law's death in 1935.

This bookplate is one of a number of plates by renowned artist Rockwell Kent (1882-1971) that became part of the Cary Memorial Library collection.

It is a striking example of Kent's strong modernist style. Kent had ties to Maine, spending several years painting the landscapes of Monhegan Island, beginning in 1905.

He is known not only for his paintings, but also for the books he wrote and illustrated, and for the more than 160 bookplates he designed over his long artistic career.

Rockwell Kent created this bookplate for his friend, the artist and industrial designer Nathan Horwitt.

In 1940 Horwitt designed a wristwatch with a single gold dot representing the sun at noon. The watch was subsequently selected by the Museum of Modern Art for its collections.

When designing this bookplate, Rockwell Kent added a Latin quotation to the image of a male figure reaching for the stars. It was not unusual for inspirational quotations to be incorporated into bookplate designs.

Sometimes a prospective bookplate owner would give an artist a great deal of leeway in creating a design, but often the owner had suggestions as to subject matter and text.

The Latin quotation here reads: "Ut studiis se literarum a mortalitate vindicet," translated as "See through literature the deliverance from mortality."

In 1929, Arthur S. Allen Jr. sailed from Nova Scotia to Greenland with two crewmembers, one of them the artist Rockwell Kent.

After encountering difficult weather, their ship crashed on rocks and sank, but all men survived unharmed.

This bookplate, created by Kent the year before their sea voyage, features a globe and a draftsman's compass, suggestive of Allen's adventurous nature and studies of naval architecture.

Tragically, young Allen was killed by a streetcar soon after returning to New York.

George Ewing asked that his bookplate include the Latin quotation "Homo sum humani nihil a me alienum esse puto," translated as "I am a human being, so nothing of human concern is foreign to me."

Rockwell Kent designed this plate with an image of a young man reading, while reclining in front of a small stage.

In a letter to Elizabeth Hyatt, George Ewing's father wrote "It might be of interest to know that Mr. Kent designed the book-plate around my son's strongest hobbies - the theatre and books."

Ralph Pulitzer was the son of Joseph Pulitzer, prominent publisher of the New York World.

When Joseph retired, Ralph succeeded him as publisher.

In 1928, Ralph Pulitzer married for the second time, to Margaret Leech. Artist Rockwell Kent designed this bookplate as a gift in celebration of their marriage.

Bookplates were most often original designs created to reveal something about the owner. A person's residence or likeness might be featured, or objects to illustrate a profession, association or hobby.

Rockwell Kent created this bookplate for George Schreiber. The illustration contains a number of items, including a hat, feathers, anchor, shield with the image of a swan, and caduceus, all of which we can assume had some relevance to the owner.

This bookplate was created by Rockwell Kent for his mother's sister, his "Auntie Jo," who was an artist herself.

In addition to the name E. Josephine Holgate, the design features an image of sunlight pouring through an open window onto several books resting on a windowsill.

One interesting aspect of the bookplate is the text, a selection from the poem "Personal Talk" by William Wordsworth. The text reads:

Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world both pure and good;
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.

Donald Baxter MacMillan (1874-1970) was an Arctic explorer and researcher, and a graduate of Bowdoin College. He was invited to join the 1908 expedition to the North Pole, which was led by Bowdoin graduate Robert E. Peary.

In 1921 MacMillan organized an expedition to Baffin Island, sailing on the schooner Bowdoin, which was named after his alma mater.

MacMillan went on to have a long career exploring and studying in the Arctic. Many of the items he collected during his years of travel and research became part of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College.

The bookplate shows a person dressed in furs standing next to a heavily laden dog sled. In the background are additional dog sleds, a schooner, and a polar bear, the Bowdoin College mascot.

The text on either side of the Bowdoin sun seal reads "Collegii Sigillum" (college seal). Additional text reads "Bowdoin 1794," "Ex Libris," and the name "Donald Baxter MacMillan."

The artist's name "Harris" appears in small letters.

This bookplate is one of several sent to Elizabeth Hyatt from Bowdoin College. It includes the college sun seal and the college motto, "Ut Aquila Versus Coelum" (As an eagle towards the sky).

In his 1925 letter to Hyatt, college president Kenneth C. M. Sills wrote, "Bowdoin has an interest in Anna Louise Cary as on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the graduation of Longfellow's class when the poet was here she was the soloist at the Commencement concert. She bequeathed to the College in her will the very excellent portrait of Longfellow by Healey."

The bookplate for the Bangor Public Library Stodder Fund is another example of an institutional, rather than personal, bookplate.

In this case, the artist featured landscape elements that evoke Maine's natural surroundings - a view of Mount Katahdin, with a background of white pine branches and cones, the state tree and flower.

Prominent illustrator Elisha Brown Bird (1868-1943), who was president for many years of the American Society of Bookplate Designers and Collectors, created the bookplate.

Bird carried on a correspondence with Elizabeth Hyatt as she was compiling the bookplate collection. In one of his letters to Hyatt, Bird mentioned his ties to Maine, writing, "for many years Bailey Island in Casco Bay has been my vacation spot and I truly love it."

Between 1917 and 1920, the American Library Association raised significant funds in order to distribute tens of thousands of books and magazines to military personnel, building camp libraries and creating libraries in hundreds of facilities, among them military hospitals. This bookplate would have been pasted inside the books in the numerous collections.

The plate was designed by Charles Buckles Falls (1874-1960), who had a long and productive career as an artist and illustrator.

In this humorous bookplate created for Leroy Goble, a man is dressed in a garment that gives him the appearance of a caterpillar or bookworm. He is surrounded by piles of books, obviously a voracious reader.

The plate was designed by notable illustrator and bookplate artist Carl S. Junge (1880-1972). Interestingly, Junge received several awards at the Seventh Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Bookplates in 1922, when the jury included Charles Buckles Falls, creator of the War Service Library bookplate.

Elizabeth Hyatt wrote to many famous people from politics, education, business and the arts in her quest for bookplates to add to the Annie Louise Cary collection she was assembling.

One of these was Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, who served in that office from 1913 to 1921.

This bookplate, by prominent bookplate designer Carl S. Junge, shows Wilson seated at a desk with a cathedral in the background.

The quotation reads: "Behind the clouds the sun is still shining. Out of the darkness unity must come."

Alexandra of Denmark was queen of the United Kingdom by virtue of having married King Edward VII, who ruled from 1901 until his death in 1910.

This bookplate was enclosed in a 1925 letter from Queen Alexandra's private secretary to Elizabeth Hyatt, who had written to many notable people requesting donations to her collection. The return address on the letter was Marlborough House, London S.W.

The bookplate depicts a castle, the Danish flag, part of a musical score, several dogs, and books with the names of well-known authors and composers. As such, it shows how bookplate designers strove to personalize their work by including elements that revealed the background or interests of the owner.

Harry Bache Smith's bookplate is somewhat unusual because of its lively color.

It depicts a medieval scene with a jester seated at a desk. Books, written music, a lute and the jester's staff are scattered about the floor. On the desk is a book with the words "Lytell Geste" and the title Robyn Hood on its cover.

Harry Bache Smith (1860-1936) was a composer and lyricist who penned the lyrics to the comic opera Robin Hood.

Besides the owner's name and the words "Ex Libris," the bookplate contains a reference to "Psalms 37-21." That psalm reads "The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again; but the righteous sheweth mercy, and giveth."

The psalm serves as a gentle, though pointed, reminder that borrowed books should be returned to their owner.

Frank A. Vanderlip (1864-1937) received this bookplate when he retired as Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, a post he held from 1897 to 1901.

It was enclosed in a 1925 letter from his secretary to Elizabeth Hyatt.

Painter and illustrator Maxfield Parrish created the artwork. The inscription is a poem on "silence" that was written by Louis J. Magee, a businessman and friend of Vanderlip.

The poem reads:
While patient nature, brooding in content
O'er vast reserves of silence, shapes the plan
Of work for aeons of accomplishment,
What restlessness attends th' affairs of man!
Yet even here, hard on the noisy mart,
Sacred the silence of the shelves shall be
To silence-garnered thoughts, a world apart,
Like the unbounded stretches of the sea.

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) was a well-known industrialist and steel magnate.

His bookplate depicts a number of books and a lamp, with the text "Andrew Carnegie" and the motto "Let there be light."

Carnegie became a leading philanthropist, giving to many causes, among them public libraries.

Jack London (1876-1916) was an American author who became successful with his exciting tales set during the Klondike Gold Rush, notably Call of the Wild and White Fang.

With its bold illustration of a wolf, London's bookplate brings to mind this writer's popular fiction.

This bookplate is an example of the rebus style, in which the image (of a person baking bread) represents the last name of the owner.

Hettie Gray Baker was not actually a baker herself. Rather, she had a long career in the motion picture industry. She worked as a film editor and censor at 20th Century Fox from 1916 to the early 1950s.

She also had an avid interest in bookplates, accumulating a collection that included many examples from celebrities.

Not all bookplates were designed for adults. This plate is an example of one designed for a child.

Here a young girl is seated at a desk, writing with a quill pen. Books and a ball are scattered on the floor. The text reads "My Book Claire L. Aubry."

A man and woman appear to be enjoying a nap as they sit beneath a palm tree in this humorous bookplate. While they doze, their book lies abandoned in the sand.

Edmund and Irene Andrews wrote A Comparative Dictionary of the Tahitian Language.

The landscape depicted here clearly suggests the tropics. The word "Vahine" refers to a woman of central Polynesia, and the word "Tane" refers to a Tahitian god.

Helen Barnhart was a collector of bookplates, and J.W. Jameson was a well-known bookplate artist and engraver.

This plate shows a pleasant summer scene, featuring a jaunty cardinal sitting on a branch, with a border of flowers.

This design shows an owl perched on a globe, surrounded by an oil lamp and several books. One of the books, Hamlet, has been pierced by a sword.

Besides the owner's name "Thomas J. Barbour" and "Ex Libris," additional text illustrates a book owner's scorn for the borrower who fails to return a volume: "Thrice cursed be he who borroweth and returneth not."

The bookplate belonging to Ernest A. Bates uses the owner's initials to create a bold, modern design. A clever layering of the initials also results in the image of the number eight, which when spoken aloud suggests the owner's last name.

The designer's name, Sidney Hunt, appears in small letters, as does the date, 1926.

Adolph Bolm (1884-1951) was a dancer, choreographer, and ballet master. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, he danced with Diaghilev's Ballet Russe, and then emigrated to the United States, where he worked with Chicago Allied Arts, the San Francisco Opera, and the American Ballet Theatre, among others.

This bookplate, which uses an alternate spelling of Bolm's first name, is signed "Senor Ismael Smith 1920." The artist was born in 1886 in Barcelona, but after 1919 lived mostly in New York.

This design includes the owner's name, "Vincent Yardley Bowditch," and a floral element, which Bowditch describes in his 1928 letter to Elizabeth Hyatt as "jessamyn, the 'family flower,' which my grandfather, Nathaniel Bowditch, the navigator & mathematician, wished to have as a family emblem because his eldest daughter brought him a spray of the flower just before his death in 1838."

In the letters she sent out requesting bookplates, Hyatt wrote "all plates... to be part of a special and very fine collection I am making for the library at Wayne, Maine." Her letters were generally brief and to the point, noting that "Wayne is the birthplace of Annie Louise Cary and it is in her honor that the collection is being made."

Bowditch wrote in his letter to Hyatt, "May I ask if this collection is named for the great singer whose beautiful voice I can recall when I was a boy. She sang in Emanuel Church in Boston and in later years in opera? If so it adds to my pleasure in sending the enclosed specimen of what I use."

William Fowler Hopson (1849-1935) was a distinguished American painter and engraver of bookplates. This example of his work shows a man seated in a chair while reading in a peaceful woodland setting, with the spire of a church in the distance and shelves of books to the side.

Text includes the owner's name, the words "ex libris," and the date, 1910.

At the top of the plate is a quotation from Shakespeare's As You Like It:

-Tongues in trees,
Books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones,
And good in everything.

A. L. Harwood Jr.'s bookplate depicts a jumping fish, fishing rods, a partridge, a hunting dog, guns and a canoe paddle.

Bookplate designers often strove to reflect the interests of their patrons. Based on his bookplate, Harwood must have been an avid sportsman.

A. L Harwood Jr. and his wife, Hattie, were long-time summer residents of Wayne, neighbors of Thaddeus and Elizabeth Hyatt.

They were active in Yacht Club and Library affairs, and were affectionately known as "Uncle Les" and "Aunt Hattie" to many of the neighboring children.

Les was a lawyer who successfully helped the library manage its investments.

A romantic image depicts a pastoral scene of a winged being playing a stringed instrument while sitting behind a young woman reading.

The text reads "beauty born of murmuring sound", a quote from a poem by William Wordsworth, and "Rosamond Weston Eddy her book."

The artist's name, "Margaret Ely Webb" appears in small type. The black and white image has been partially colored in with watercolors.

This art deco style bookplate was created for publisher Donald S. Friede of Chicago by Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias.

In 1924 the artist traveled to New York, where he produced many drawings in the jazz clubs of Harlem and also designed stage sets and costumes for the theater.

After returning to Mexico, he became a self-taught anthropologist, contributing to the study of the Olmec culture.

Winward Prescott was an avid collector of and writer about bookplates. His bookplate uses the image of a skull to suggest mortality. The skull rests on a book with the text "Book Plate Literature - Prescott."

Prescott had written a book with a similar title in 1914. Surrounding the central image are rough sketches representing a variety of bookplates. The initials ANM and date 1912 appear at the bottom.

George F. Strong was the librarian of Adelbert College of Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. His childhood home in Kent's Hill is illustrated on this personal bookplate.

The text on the bookplate includes the name George Franklin Strong, the date 1915, and the initials J.B.J., presumably the artist's.

The letter that Strong wrote to Elizabeth Hyatt in response to her request for his bookplate states that as Strong's birthplace was Kent's Hill, only a few miles from Wayne, "I am naturally prejudiced in favor of your request."

Olin Sewall Pettingill Jr. (1907-2001) was a world-renowned ornithologist and filmmaker, a college professor, and director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology from 1960 to 1973.

He was born in Belgrade, Maine, his grandfather had a home in Wayne, and his father, a doctor, ran a tuberculosis sanatorium in Hebron.

Pettingill retired to the family home in Wayne, and in later years continued to visit the family camp on Androscoggin Lake.

This bookplate is pasted into the book The Blue Flower by Henry Van Dyke. On the page facing the plate is handwritten "Sewall Pettingill December 1924."

Van Dyke was a Presbyterian minister, poet, short story writer, essayist, and professor.

This bookplate shows the house in Wayne that was acquired in 1931 by Annie Merian, sister of Dr. Thaddeus P. Hyatt.

Dr. Hyatt was a prominent New York dentist, and the husband of Elizabeth Hyatt, who created this bookplate collection in honor of famed opera singer Annie Louise Cary (1841-1921).

Annie Merian's son Alfred, who was an architect, designed the bookplate.

In addition to the house, which he called "Scotholm," Alfred included a number of classical and symbolic elements, which he described as follows:

Pediment and columns from Temples of Minerva at Priene and Athens.

Merian coat of arms, representing the city of Basel in Switzerland, from whence the family came.

Cornucopia, representing a full life.

Grecian urn, Corinthian capital, Inca vase, and Persian lute, representing the arts.

T-square, sun-dial, skull, globe, hour-glass, compass and books, representing philosophy and the sciences.

Pipe, cards and beer-mug, representing the joys of conviviality.

Piolet and rope, the implements of his favorite sport, mountain-climbing.