Alexander Turnbull’s bookplates

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 12, Issue 2, 1 October 1979, Page 105

Alexander Turnbull’s bookplates

PENELOPE GRIFFITH

The surest way of acquiring a love for books and a library of your own is to secure the services of a good artist and have him design for you a bookplate. 1 Alexander Turnbull’s bibliophily and inspiration to collect needed no goad and it was some six years after acquiring his first New Zealand book that he commissioned his first bookplate from the well-known London illustrator Walter Crane. However, following a trend among ex-libris users, he did go on to have further designs executed, of which there are eight examples identified here. 2 Unfortunately they cannot all be documented as to date or artist.

The Crane bookplate (Figure I) was commissioned and paid for in advance (10 guineas) in June 1891, when Turnbull was in London. The pen and ink drawing was sent to him on 8 July, but

had to be returned to the artist because the final word of the motto Fortunafavet audaci was misspelt ‘audace’. 3 When the correction had been done Crane wrote recommending Mr Arthur Leverett as a reliable engraver to transmit the design to wood and we must assume that it was carried out by him. The striking design (technically termed a rebus, or play on words) has been frequently reproduced by recognised writers on ex-libris art —the most prestigious being Egerton Castle in his English book plates (London, 1893). That it appealed to Turnbull is amply demonstrated by the length of time it was his only bookplate, the frequency with which he continued to use it throughout his collecting career, the modest pride with which he referred to it later and the enthusiasm with which he wrote of it to his brother Robert on the day after he received the drawing: ‘lt is rather effective on the whole . . .’ 4

Five years later Turnbull, back in Wellington, wrote to the London bookseller Bernard Quaritch, whose customer he was, asking him to arrange for an engraved bookplate: ‘I may say that, of course, I have a book-plate already—a very pretty one too by Walter Crane —but I now want an armorial one engraved upon copper.’ 5 The question of artist and size was left to Quaritch’s discretion, Turnbull supplying a coloured sketch of the arms and stipulating only that it should be ‘accurate armorially . . . and artistic . . He asked for 1500 copies to be struck off and sent out with the plate to New Zealand.

In October 1896 Turnbull wrote again to Quaritch and (after ordering a book) noted that the bookplates had arrived safely, were ‘very handsome’ but had a defect in that the paper buckled and wrinkled when damped and applied. 6 It seems probable that the bookplate in question is the one identified by Barnett 7 as a photogravure by Graham Johnson, the heraldic artist attached to the court of the Lord Lyon, Edinburgh (Figure II).

The difficulties must have been resolved either by modifying the method of application or by printing the plate again because this is the most commonly found armorial design in the collection. There are four variant printings: two sizes printed by photogravure and two slightly different sizes printed from half-tone blocks presumably made later from the photogravure bookplates. The larger half-tone is printed on a shiny surfaced paper and the smaller half-tone on very thin paper but the reproduction of the smaller varies so considerably that, at its worst, the original design is scarcely recognisable. Turnbull’s wishes to receive the printing plate cannot have been met. The two pictorial or symbolic bookplates worked on by the Sydney artist D. H. Souter in 1909 are probably the best known

after the Crane design (but more modestly priced at 3 guineas for one) and the only others that can be accurately dated. 8 Turnbull at one stage seems to have asked that the shell be cut out of the larger design (Figure III) and Souter did so, but noted that it looked ‘a little one sided—there is not any reason for the figure being at the prompt side of the stage’. Flis sketched suggestion for a redrawn version resulted in a smaller bookplate (Figure IV) but it is not clear at which point Turnbull decided to proceed with having both designs printed, the larger in its original form. Nor is there any explanation for Souter’s humorous rebus bookplate suggestion (Figure V) or, more sadly, of Turnbull’s reaction to it.

Of the five remaining bookplates, which cannot be dated precisely, three are armorial and two can be broadly classified as New Zealand plates. The two large armorial designs, the first (Figure VI) an engraving reminiscent of the binding armorials 10 and the second (Figure VII) a woodcut, seem to have been the least popular of any of the bookplates; the third (Figure VIII), of which only one example has been noted, 11 is in fact taken from one of Turnbull’s binding dies. It is printed in gilt on vellum and is mounted inside a two-volume collected Milton with an unusual Zaehnsdorf binding dated 1914.

The two New Zealand bookplates, the Maori whare design signed ‘C.Praetorius’ (Figure IX) and the elegantly simple typographic label (Figure X), were among Turnbull’s favourites. Nothing is known about the commissioning of the Praetorius plate although the Library has the original ink drawing 12 and two further detached examples, one printed on larger-sized art paper (possibly a proof) and the other printed in burnt sienna ink.

The label was printed at the Te Rau Press in Gisborne by Archdeacon (later Bishop) H. W. Williams who had established it in 1897 with a Pearl platen machine (superseded in 1908 by a gas-operated press) at the Te Rau Maori College, primarily to print an annual church almanac and the periodical Te Pipiwharauroa. There are, however, several other interesting small works which came from the press up to 1913 when Williams moved away from the college to live in the country and work on the Maori dictionary. Williams was one of Turnbull’s closest friends and adviser on Maori language material and it is particularly appropriate that he should also have been able to print him this label, which most probably dates from the end of the first decade of the century. 12 The variety of Turnbull’s collection of this covert and presently declining art form is perhaps surprising, especially in comparison with his conservative binding armorials, but it is this individuality which adds an extra pleasure to the handling of the books. They are not merely the marks of ownership.

REFERENCES 1 P. A. Lawlor, Books and Bookmen (Wellington, 1954) p. 47. 2 J. C. Andersen, Annals of New Zealand Literature (Wellington, 1936) p. 112, lists 11 A. H. Turnbull bookplates in his collection on display but it seems likely that some were variants of the nine designs reproduced here. 3 Crane’s original drawing, the correction clearly visible, is ATL Art Coll. A136/1. The related correspondence is ATL MS Papers 57/18. 4 A. H. Turnbull, Letterbooks 9 July 1891. The three letterbook volumes (of which there are typed transcripts and an index) are ATL q MS 1891-1900. 5 Ibid., 12 May 1896. 6 Ibid., 27 October 1896. 7 P. Neville Barnett, Armorial Bookplates; Their Romantic Origin and Artistic Development (Sydney, 1932) p. 135, 157. 8 The original ink drawings for these (but not the design without the shell) are ATL Art Coll. A136/2 and A136/4. The related correspondence is ATL MS Papers 57/86. 9 Ink drawing, ATL Art Coll. A136/3. 10 Reproduced in Turnbull Library Record no. 8 (Nov. 1951) 29. 11 I am grateful to Mr Robert Petre of the Reference Section, ATL, for pointing out this example. 12 ATL Art Coll. A136/13. 13 The detailed information on the Te Rau Press is from Canon Nigel Williams, Waikanae, via Miss K. S. Williams to whom I am grateful for her interest and suggestions. It seems conceivable that Williams was also the artist/printer of the Maori whare design on the basis of a list of New Zealand bookplate artists and their plates printed in the New Zealand Ex Libris Society’s Brochure No. 2 (1933) 37-43. This records the Te Rau Press, Gisborne, as artist of three typographical bookplates for A. H. Turnbull in 1911-12, but it seems just as likely that this is a misprint as a line block from a drawing would not normally be classified as typographical, and accounting for a third plate merely creates new problems. Williams did certainly do original drawings for designs reproduced in Augustus Hamilton’s Maori art (Wellington, 1901); they are ATL Art Coll. E 331. One can only speculate on the implications of his ‘pseudonym’ C.Praetorius if he was in fact the artist of the Maori whare bookplate.