B is for Bookplates - 3 - Mum

And so we get to Mum's bookplate, for which I've found some of the 'working's out', which may be of interest to anyone thinking of designing one for themselves.

 

Listening to the obituary for Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, the 'singing nun' (aka the 'honky-tonk nun'), who was so much more, on the Radio, earlier this evening, it was saddening to learn she won a two-year scholarship to London's Royal Academy, but which, for reasons unknown, she never took it up, because a similar thing happened to my Mother.

 

She won a scholarship to the Slade, but never took it up and I never filly understood why, but it seems it was a combination of Orwellian post-war socialist means-testing, pride within the family and sexism; Uncle Johnny (male, firstborn) did go to Uni'? Doubly frustrating to miss-out, as the period she would have been there (the Slade) was among its high-points.

Anyway, suffice to say Mum clearly had a natural talent for such things, and some of the sketches she produced for her silversmithing designs are exquisite, although I haven't found her wild strawberry watercolour which was always my favourite?

 

These preliminary sketches/further studies are on two sides of an old envelope! Would it be 'airmail' with those blue stripes? She decided upon the family coat of arms (more of which in a future post), within a diamond or - heraldically speaking - a lozenge (when inherited through the female line) and having reproduced it on a photocopier (?) tried out a few layouts, and there may be more lost stages/preliminaries, this is just what I've found. To be honest, I prefer the lettering of the upper one?

The finished article, I don't know what the rule is with bookplates, but I am pasting mine over the bottom-right-hand quarter, so you can still read most of the one underneath and get one whole Talbot (what heraldic dogs are called; a now-lost hunting breed), unless it's a small volume or a cramped position (due to text layout or something) in which case I put mine right-over, which has a sad finality to it, almost the feeling of treading on a grave?

 

EAH, was her maiden name, Elizabeth Anne Hall, while Liz W was obviously for her married name; Walter.

Here's a working drawing for a design she did for a friend, I don't know if it ever went to print, and they eventually fell-out (over a Japanese submarine-commander's Katana parts of all things), despite remaining colleagues for several more years, but the details of such 'skeletons' pass with the parties concerned!

 

Like coins or stamps (or bottle caps, matchbook/boxes, cheese or cigar labels, travel/restaurant sugar packets - all the small collectables/paper ephemera!), the trick with bookplates is to produce a design which is interesting and aesthetically pleasing, yet also carries a certain amount of information in a small area, without it being unreadable and/or too busy or too plain. I'm not going to judge Mum's out-loud, but you can judge mine next!