Book-Plate

26 March 2010

This stereotype ex libris book-plate [image of woman, naked but for shoes and a hat, straddling a book] would probably not be of much interest to me except that it was designed by Karel Šimůnek (1869 – 1942), the very same artist who did this lithographic book-plate [image of young woman reading on couch, in an early 20th-Century undergarment, stockings, and one red shoe] a copy of which I acquired on 16 July.

I prefer the lithograph, in part because what the woman in the stereotype appears to be doing cannot be good for the book. And, while raised bands on the spine of a book might have peculiar užitečnost to a nemrava, they were an artefact of better-quality book-binding (though sometimes false bands are used to counterfeit such book-binding), and hence of what may be expected to be a more valuable volume.

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5 Responses to Book-Plate

  • The Apocolyte says:

    "what the woman in the stereotype appears to be doing cannot be good for the book"

    HAHA!!

    "Honey, I can't seem to find my first edition Isaac Newton Optice, you know, the rare old leather-bound volume, in Latin, that's usually in the display case in my libra -- OH MY FRIKKING...NOOOAAAUUGGHHH!!!"

    This brings a very different meaning to the phrase, 'curling up with a good book'.

    Perhaps the poor woman is blind, or has cataracts, and therefore can only tell which volume she is reading by tactual sensatory perception.

  • Mykal Banta says:

    Oeconomist: I apologize for communicating directory to your comments, but could find no email. Recently, you were kind enough to leave several comments on my blog, The Bloody Pulp. The first two that came in I published, but the next several (at least 5) I moderated by checking each en masse. I blundered, however, and clicked the "reject" option instead of the "publish" option. Once you make that mistake in Blogger, the comments are gone forever. There is no way to retrieve a "rejected" comment. If these mistakenly rejected comments were as informative as the two comments I did publish, I have wasted a lot of fine research/legwork on your part regarding origin of the Eerie Pub. story. I'm sorry about that and can only offer to be more careful in future if you would care to resubmit same. -- Mykal Banta ([email address redacted]).

    • Daniel says:

      Ouch! Well, these things happen. I have regenerated most or all of the information and made new comments, perhaps better written than the comments that were cast into the void.

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