Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Ex libris






Josef Váchal's woodcut bookplates [some NSFW]. Link…

3 comments:

  1. Hmm, Váchal bookplates that I haven't seen before! (Admittedly there must be quite a few in that category.) I always wonder whether the books that received them were quite as bizarre as the bookplates.

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  2. That's a very good point Karla. It would be interesting to know what the books were. I would like to think that the Srp was in Czech Photographic Avant-Garde.

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  3. I don't know if I'm following your line of thought exactly there. Váchal hasn't got anything reproduced in Czech Photographic Avant-Garde for the perhaps mundane reason that he wasn't a photographer, although I suppose that in the unlikely event that Jan Srp is still alive he might have stuck his bookplate in a copy.

    Any of the Váchal bookplates would, of course, look very suitable pasted into In Morbid Colours: Art and the Idea of Decadence in the Bohemian Lands 1880-1914.

    The Památník národního písemnictví has a large ex libris collection but I assume it is unstuck exemplars since many of the books in their holdings have the bookplates right where the original owners glued them. I can't recall offhand whether any of those I've seen were by Váchal.

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