Special emblems that personalize books
Print Edition
BOOKPLATESARE a literary accessory for avid book lovers.
Also known as ex-libris, which is Latin for “from the books,” bookplates have been gracing the inside front covers of books for centuries.
They are often elaborately decorated slips of paper bearing the name of the book’s owner, and in the past, the coat-of-arms of the owner.
The practice originated in 16th-century Germany, when books were treasured possessions and owners wanted to stamp their own identities on them. The practice was introduced in China in the 1900s.
This month, 101 bookplates made by local artist Xu Hongxing were displayed in the Jing’an Library.
They are engraved on wood and printed from the blocks in a watercolor style. Every woodcut, usually about 10 centimeters long and 9 centimeters wide, takes Xu two weeks to make.
He designs the pattern based on a book’s content or from an owner’s request. The themes vary from human portraits and plants to urban buildings.
Some of Xu’ works weren’t made for any specific person but rather for Xu himself or to mark a book series and even city landmarks.
“Abookplate shows someone’s possession of a book,” Xu said. “But it can also be a souvenir or even a method to record history.”
Since the 1980s, Xu reckons he has made about 300 bookplates. His favorite theme is a water town scene as it once looked in Shanghai’s Jiangwan area, where he was born.
Xu said the local market for bookplates started to prosper in the 1990s.
“In the 1980s, a bookplate cost about 5 yuan (75 US cents), almost a seventh of the average monthly income at the time,” he said. “It was kind of a luxury product. But now, most bookplates cost only about 100 yuan.”
Still, the penchant for bookplates remains mostly an intellectual habit in cultural circles, he said. That means the art form runs the risk of dying out.
“Very few young people are interested in bookplates,” he said. “Only art school teachers and students do this as a matter of amateur interest.”
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