B is for Bookplates - 5 - Mine

Some of you will be pleased to learn this is the last of these . . . for now; we will return to them in the fullness of time, along with the previously mentioned book-marks, one of which, a novelty polymer one, came in with a mixed-lot this afternoon!

So having been introduced to bookplates at a young age; 6 or 7 maybe, and knowing Mum had one, I had a hankering for one as I began to accumulate books myself, in my teens, when I was also visiting Thomas Thorp's myself, as a customer, on my way to and from Art Collage!

 

And these sketches date from that time (1981-3), I was actually working on an/my graphic interpretation of Celtic artwork, quite the hippy! These were in part for a Tattoo I never actually got done! Something which ironically pleases me now, given that every other buggers' got them, they've rather lost their cache, in their commonality.

 

You can see there's a bit of 'Slimfont' work going on as well, and a simplified version of the dragon ended-up on my carved tile, might-be-Roman, coaster.

This is where it would lead about 15 years later, these are a few colour studies I did on some photocopies, in various sizes, with my treasured magic markers - long since dried-out. Colour really doesn't work on bookplates, I don't know why, but they almost demand to be left understated! If I had to use one in would be the browns on the right, I'm a sucker for Autumnal colours!

 

Working out the layout and lettering, clearly 'slimfont' wasn't far away once I'd gone with the circles or bubbles concept! And my middle initial 'D' was dropped as it was going to obscure the tail . . . yeah, it's an embryo!

 

The two scraps of paper top-centre look like they might be the margins of 'Model and Collectors Mart'! Long-gone now I think!

 

I don't know what I was doing here, the cut-outs are presumably because I thought about reversing the image (no computer still! '97-98?), while the larger image (actually the same size as both the cut-outs and the tracing) might have been half-an-idea for a sundial?

The little blue sketch may be the first version, but therein lies the problem with the whole design, I eschewed the designs which used the tracing of rights-free stuff, and commercial lettering, for something wholly my own work . . . for my own bookplate; makes sense, right?

But . . . one of the books I bought at Thorp's, back in the nineteen-eighties, was the English-language, full-colour version of Frenchman Philip Druillet's Lone Slone/Delirius, published by Dragon's Dream, and, on the large, double page spread of his lovemaking with some universal god-head's daughter/princess (or something, I can't check as it's in storage), there are a bunch of bubbles and planets and stuff at the top of the page/panel, including something looking suspiciously like this?

 

And there is issue; there is a child produced by the union, it is being conceived in the panel-image, so it is an embryo! Now it would be wrong of me to claim this is an original, if it's derivative of the master's work!

 

In my defence, at art collage you are taught to sketch anything you like, anything that takes your fancy, something which was only reinforced many years later when we had to visit museums and produce copious works of what we saw, while at university as a mature student. After all, the great architect Santiago Calatrava is known to have based his overhead rail gantries on a sketch of a bull's head!

Now when I was working on the bookplate, I was sure I was dealing with a funny little sketch of a planet or something, and while I decided it did indeed look like an alien embryo and, if developed along those lines, would have connections to the embryonic ideas that come out of reading &etc . . . I also have to face the fact that by subconscious accident or forgetful design, I probably ripped-off Mr. Druillet! Hay-ho, I'm stuck with it now and it's stuck into thousands of my books!

But it's only stuck into the art/architecture/design and collectables/modelling/wargaming libraries, so I may return to the old designs, or make a new one altogether, when I get the rest plated-up in the next few years.

 

Perhaps one of the Oriental ones (previous-but-one post) could be used for my late mother's library of oriental art, ceramics and persian carpets, with a new one (I have half an idea for one with a rabbit in the bottom left corner and a distant warren in the background, top-right) for the natural sciences? And I'll need one for the History/military books? I wouldn't use bookplates for fiction, I find it an ephemeral art!

Oh, and if you find this bookplate in either of Michael Maughan's 1st or 2nd volumes of the Timpo guide, the Great Book of Corgi OR any of the Hornby Companion series (landscape hardbacks), they are mine, and the person who has them - shouldn't have, I think some may be in Colorado, if not they are long gone as the other suspect (and there were only ever the two) is dead! But the books are still mine!