BOOKPLATES OF INDIVIDUALS

I originally selected the bookplate of Dr. Georg Abelsdorff (Figure 25) because of what I took to be a magnifying glass.  However, being curious about the open book, I looked up the name Albert von Graefe.  Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Albrecht von Graefe, who was born in Berlin in 1828, is recognized as the founder of scientific ophthalmology.  Dr. Abelsdorff, the owner of this bookplate, was an ophthalmologist.  The device that is suggestive of a hand-magnifier is actually an early ophthalmoscope; next to it are instruments for eye surgery, including a cataract knife.  The large eye at the top of the bookplate is, then, understandable.

click image to enlarge (194K) Figure 25

click image to enlarge (185K) Figure 26

The bookplate of Dr. O. Appel (Figure 26) shows a microscope flanking an owl (symbolic of wisdom).  The prominent flowers and other floral parts suggest that the owner’s interest lay in botany, or plant genetics.

Percival Bailey’s bookplate (Figure 27) is dominated by nerve cells.  This microscopic  subject is most appropriate because Dr. Percival Bailey was an American neurosurgeon and psychiatrist.  He was born in May, 1892, and died in Illinois in 1973.  His preferred working field was the brain.  The Library of Health Sciences, Chicago, has a 230-page Catalog of the Percival Bailey Collection of Neurology and Psychiatry.  He was the Director of the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute.

click image to enlarge (174K) Figure 27

Most microscopists will know Arthur L.E. Barron to be the founder, in 1937, and long-time Editor of the journal, The Microscope, and the author of Using The Microscope (Chapman and Hall, 1965); he was the 1998 State Microscopical Society of Illinois August Köhler Award recipient.  His bookplate (Figures 28, 29) features an alchemist-like figure with microscope on the table in front of him, chemical apparatus and distillation unit, and reference tomes.  On the left side is a printing press, in allusion to his own book publishing efforts; also, his father was in the book exporting business.  I am very pleased to be able to relate the story behind this bookplate, as told to me by Arthur Barron in his 1991 letter that accompanied the bookplate. 

click image to enlarge (323K) Figure 28

click image to enlarge (204K) Figure 29

I quote from his letter, “It was drawn for me by Xavier Collet, a Belgian artist, in 1946.  The introduction came by way of the late E.F. Linssen, himself a Belgian National permanently resident in England, his parents being refugees of the first World War.  He was a regular contributor to and associated with the editing of The Microscope on the entomological side until 1940, when he was recalled to Belgium on Active Service and then Intelligence.

“It was when he came back to England in 1946 that he told me Collet was accepting commissions and if I cared to have a drawing, he would arrange it.  The original is about 6 x 8 ins. and from it I had the printing block made.  We had never met, but he asked for my principal interests (microscopy and publishing) and the picture you see was the result.  I’ve always liked it and prized it especially for its associations.”

Linssen, whom Barron mentions, wrote thirteen articles for The Microscope between 1937, when the journal was founded, to 1950.  Most of his articles were devoted to the evolution of the tilting stage and stereo-photomicrography, but insects, color photomicrography, and Antwerp Microscopists are other topics of his articles.