Of bookplates, dragonflies, and pigs

“Your blog postings about bookplates have brightened my day,” wrote Lew Jaffe of Philadelphia.  And then he brightened ours.

First, he kindly sent us his favorite bookplate.  “It was engraved by William Fowler Hopson and depicts a pig fetching a book,” he said.

Yes, but… but… but… why a pig?  I spoke with Lew on the phone and asked.  Well, he said, pigs are smart.

Winston Churchill agreed with him:  “I like pigs,” the Nobel laureate famously stated. “Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”

Perhaps you thought there wasn’t too much more to say about bookplates.  You don’t know Lew. He runs a fascinating bookplate blog called “Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie: Random Thoughts from a Passionate Bookplate Collector.”

He’s been blogging on bookplates since 2006, and still has enough material left over to post today on that evergreen topic, “How do you remove a bookplate?”  (Hint: answer involves tongs and hot, steaming paper towels.)

And lest you think his is a case of isolated madness, he has a blogroll with other like-minded souls, including “Varnoso, Excellent Bookplate Blog.”

Meanwhile, we rather like his own bookplate, at left.

Check out his blog and other featured bookplates here. And do send on your own favorites.

Author: Cynthia Haven

Cynthia Haven has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, and other publications. Her work has also appeared in Le Monde, La Repubblica, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly Conversation, The Georgia Review, Civilization, and others. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven was published in London, 2005. Her Czestaw Mitosz: Conversations was published in 2006; Joseph Brodsky: Conversations in 2003; An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czestaw Mitosz was published in 2011 with Ohio University Press / Swallow Press. She is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford. Her biography René Girard, A Life will be published next year. Join me at twitter: @chaven View all posts by Cynthia Haven