An Introduction or A Treatise on the Divination of Heraldry

So how did I come to be researching the fascinating, yet obscure topic of Heraldic Bookplates?
Last year I took the paper: 213.358 Fine Arts Internship at Massey University. The idea of this paper is to: form new connections and relationships in the industry, to cultivate and extend your skills, to discover all about what your professional sponsor does. The timeframe - 100 hours in blocks or single days over three months. I was lucky enough to be able to secure a place at the Alexander Turnbull Library under Ephemera Curator, Barbara Lyon.

Barbara Lyon had a lovely project in mind for me - to help catalogue a bookplate collection (collected from far and wide by the very interesting David H Graham).

“The David H Graham bookplate collection has been under my purview, although it is not officially part of the Ephemera  Collection. Around half of it has been catalogued (about 10-15 years ago), but there are still many boxes whose contents are not listed. I think a volunteer could and list the contents of each box -  and this could then be transferred to TAPUHI/TIAKI by an ATL staff member. I imagine that someone with the interests Jess has may find this appealing.”

The bookplates are not part of the Ephemera Collection, but they may interest you from the design point of view.

They are part of the David H Graham collection, and arrived in the Library around 1965. See http://natlib.govt.nz/records/23247382 . From there you can navigate to the “child” records, ie records for the folders that have already been described.

Most of the New Zealand, Australian, British and American plates have been described. The boxes that remain to be catalogued are non-New Zealand, some dating back several centuries.

And so, Barbara got me to start with the Heraldic section of David H Graham's collection. (I really have to say here that that decision was pretty much like a match made in heaven for me). 

As part of my describing the bookplates, I began with the name inscribed on the bookplate, then the approximate era of the bookplate, and then moved onto describing the heraldic information. This was a part I definately enjoyed very much. In order to go about this, I had to begin to learn about which different parts of the heraldic plate meant, what their motifs were, and what the attitudes of the people and animals represented meant. 

To begin to date a heraldic plate, I would look at the style of the bookplate to try to decipher its age. If this was difficult, looking up the name on the plate next was useful - often information about people in the 18th and 19th centuries was recorded into a census, or legal documents, or in birth and death records. Often there were two or three people with the same name, so then looking at the bookplate styles again would enable me to refocus which person and which era the bookplate belonged to. 

More important than the person who commissioned the bookplate was the sculptor (or to us - the engraver), because this also made it easier to refine the date it was made.

Another area to describe on the bookplate was the motto, and there are some very interesting ones indeed! This is where my 3rd and 4th form Latin came in handy (along with a few translation websites and especially this page: http://www.araltas.com/services/motto.html ).

And so I was entrusted with the glorious task of researching heraldic bookplates. 

The Library over the course of the time I started my internship (Nov 2015), began to upgrade to a new cataloging system, and so the decision was made for me to work in a simple word document to record all the details from each bookplate. This was divided into three sections: who the plate was commissioned for, description (including mottoes, and main motifs shown), and finally the date (based on the owner or sculptor).

As part of my reporting back in this blog I have taken a few iphone pictures of some of the plates I found most interesting. (These are in a separate blog post, Interesting Heraldic Bookplates).