Bookplate: Eleanor Masters

Ex Libris: the printed image and the art of the book, 2010

Bookplates were first produced in Germany in the 1470s. These diminutive prints displayed a book owner’s name and were generally adhered to a book’s interior cover. To some extent, their popularity developed alongside that of the printed book and by the seventeenth century they were in wide use, recognised not only as a mark of ownership, but as vital products of the graphic arts.

Although bookplates had been used in Australia since the 1790s, significant bookplate production by Australian artists did not occur until the late nineteenth century.

Brothers Norman and Lionel Lindsay began experimenting with bookplate art in the 1890s after having been inspired by the work of German contemporaries, Max Klinger and Ernst Kirchner. The brothers’ efforts led to the popularisation of bookplate art in Australia but the onset of First World War hindered production, with interest in the art form not re-emerging until the early 1920s. Examples of bookplates from this later period reflect the vogue for simpler, semi-abstract imagery that grew out of artistic movements such as cubism.

Elspeth Pitt, Assistant Curator, Prints, Drawings & Photographs