{"id":18556,"date":"2025-06-11T07:00:31","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T07:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/?p=18556"},"modified":"2025-11-03T20:31:00","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T20:31:00","slug":"thats-my-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/2025\/06\/11\/thats-my-book\/","title":{"rendered":"That\u2019s MY book! The William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection"},"content":{"rendered":"

By David Cardillo, Digital Collections and Preservation<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the days before digital catalogs and barcodes, many book lovers had a much more personal\u2014and artistic\u2014way of marking ownership: the bookplate. For those who had personal libraries, bookplates were used to identify a book as belonging to an individual or an individual\u2019s library.\u00a0 Bookplates often had a sketch or picture with the owner\u2019s name in some sort of calligraphy or script.\u00a0 This was to ensure a borrowed book would make its way back to its owner.<\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>William Agustus Brewer Bookplate Collection<\/span><\/a> is a remarkable window into this world. Housing 12,870 printed bookplates from <\/span>1700 to 2000 by a variety of artists<\/span><\/a> and from several personal collections, this collection offers a stunning variety of subjects, styles and artistic signatures.\u00a0 With contributions from designers such <\/span>Thomas Bewick, Edward Burne-Jones, Kate Greenaway, William Hogarth, Howard Pyle, Rudolf Ruzicka and James A. M. Whistler, the collection showcases how diverse and expressive these small artworks could be.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a <\/span>PDF organizing this collection<\/span><\/a> of over 12,000 items by subject, artist and artist and exploring recurring themes like birds, death\u2019s heads, medicine, music, rebuses, science and portraits of historical and literary figures.<\/span>The collection also contains additional material relating to Brewer’s collection, including Mrs. Augusta LaMotte Brewer’s address book and printing plates and blocks, as well as reference material relating to bookplates.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One subject featured in these bookplate images is architecture.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Ex<\/a>

Ex Libris Charles A Coolidge<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Another, more specific sub-collection is chess.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Carl<\/a>

Carl A. Baumann Ex Libris<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Apparently, dancing was another subject that was used for bookplates.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Ex-Libris<\/a>

Ex-Libris E.G. Boreham<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here is one of the bookplates used for books in the Medical Library of the Teachers College at Columbia University.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Teachers<\/a>

Teachers College Library : Adelaide Nutting : Historical Nursing Collection : Columbia University<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mythology has always been a popular theme for art, including on bookplates.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Ex<\/a>

Ex Libris Donald Blanding<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

And of course, what book or library-themed collection of images would be complete without cats?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Mildred<\/a>

Mildred Gotlieb her book<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Another bookplate collection is the <\/span>Carol Hoffecker Bookplate Collection<\/span><\/a>, also in Quartex.\u00a0 Both that and the William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection contain numerous examples of niche artwork with a diverse number of subjects.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By David Cardillo, Digital Collections and Preservation   In the days before digital catalogs and barcodes, many book lovers had a much more personal\u2014and artistic\u2014way of marking ownership: the bookplate. For those who had personal libraries, bookplates were used to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":18564,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[12,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-collections","category-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 21:41:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18556"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18556"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18873,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18556\/revisions\/18873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}