Collection of 761 miniature works of art representing 500 years of the bookplate from the first known example -- ca. 1450 -- to a wide range of fascinating 20th-century designs. Introduction.

Excerpt from Artists and Engravers of British and American Book Plates: A Book of Reference for Book Plate and Print Collectors T is not the intention of this work to go over the ground which has now been traversed so many times by a number of able writers, nor to say anything about the history, style, or collection of the book plate. This is simply a compilation which was begun and continued for my own use, and is now presented to my brother collectors at their request, many of them having found my manuscript useful for reference for some time past. It is hoped that in its present form it will also be of some use to the general print collector. About twelve years ago I commenced in an interleaved copy of the Hon. J. Leicester Warren's Guide to the Study of Book Plates to make additions to the list of engravers and their work contained therein. But it was soon apparent that interleaving alone would not contain a fraction of the additional names that were constantly turning up. In the year 1890 Sir Wollaston Franks, who had been keeping a similar list for some years, took the trouble to copy out for me a list of the artists and engravers which be had accumulated; this was without any names of the plates which they had executed. A glance at the two lists was sufficient to compel me to remove the whole to a manuscript volume which has been in constant use ever since. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.