When the Grolier Club was founded in January 1884, the establishment of a library of books was among its primary objectives. Important and useful gifts, which began to arrive almost immediately, soon necessitated a suitable club bookplate. The first commission was given to the artist George Wharton Edwards. His rather crude design in pen and ink shows a Victorian-looking Atlas holding a globe containing the club name, after the famous sixteenth-century French bibliophile, and Jean Grolier's coat of arms surrounded by lavish scrolls. The club still has stacks of this early effort.

            In 1894 a new bookplate artist appeared who immediately captured the patronage of many collectors and institutions. This was Edwin Davis French, and his bookplate for the Grolier Club is this month's cover subject.

            French was born in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, in January 1851, of old Yankee stock. It was significant for his development that his native town was a home of the jewelry industry and peopled with designers, engravers, goldsmiths, and silversmiths whose art and influence permeated the place, affecting even those not at all concerned with their creative work. As a child, French was frail in health, bookish, and artistic. He entered Brown University's class of 1870, but was obliged to withdraw during his sophomore year, a portent of tuberculosis. He became an engraver of silver in the local firm of Whiting, and through his special gifts rose to be chief of the engraving department.

            His life was now committed to art, and engraving suited his temperament and state of health. Moving to New York City in 1876, he continued to work for the Whiting Company, develop his phenomenal gift for languages and literature, and become deeply involved in the administration of the Art Students League. He was understandably devoted to the study of the German Little Masters of engraving. His attention was called to bookplates by a sister-in-law, then a cataloguer in the library of Columbia College. After rendering a well-received trial run and issuing a prospectus with a specimen plate, he was soon taken up by prominent New York bibliophiles, among them that incomparable collector, Beverly Chew. It as almost certainly Chew who was responsible for the Grolier Club bookplate commission.

            Elaborate as French's Grolier Club plate seems today, it was entirely characteristic of his production and of other copperplate engravers of the period. It dates from 1894, his fecund first year as an independent bookplate engraver, when he produced an astounding twenty-eight plates in all. The commission from the Grolier was thus not of particular significance to French, it seems, though the resulting plate is larger than most of his work. A scrapbook of most of his early work in the Grolier library confirms this. French succumbed to tuberculosis after an engraving career of only twelve years.

            For those interested in books and philosophy, a tour through the close-packed iconography of the Grolier plate, contained within a frame 5¼ by 2 7¤8 inches, might prove enjoyable. A magnifying glass is recommended.

            Preliminary stages of the plate found in the Grolier scrapbook comprise two elaborate pencil sketches and one proof. There are numerous final states printed on Japan paper and even on vellum, a luxurious material (but with a notoriously difficult printing surface) much in favor with the somewhat self-conscious New York bibliophiles of the period, as it provided a link with deluxe vellum printing of the past.

            Filling the borders is a lush mixture of acanthus leaves (Acanthus mollis), a classical motif allowing for swirling forms that can fill large areas. Also found is laurel (Laurel nobilis), traditional attribute of victory and achievement. Both plant forms break out of the margins, greatly enlivening the design. French's composition sits on top of books bound in the style of Grolier's period of mid-sixteenth-century France. The open volume appears to be a generic Book of Hours. Given French's penchant for historical accuracy, it would not be at all surprising someday to pin down an exact source for it. The spines show notable Grolier publications: the Langland to Wither of 1894, the Philobiblion of 1889, either Robert Hoe's or William Matthews's lectures on bookbinding, published in 1886 and 1889, respectively, and the 1894 facsimile of the 1694 Bradford Laws of New-York.

            In the top left corner is a medallion with the arms of Jean Grolier (1479-1565) as a bachelor. The surround is lettered with his name and position of royal counselor, treasurer, and receiver general of finances for the duchy of Milan, a post held from late 1509 until mid-1520. He married only at age forty, in October 1520, to Isabelle Anne Briçonnet, the greatest heiress in France outside the royal family. Thus, his arms quartered with hers also appear, at the top crossing of the arched window-like frame dominating the composition. These two armorial renderings are literal copies from the frontispiece to Le Roux de Lincy's 1866 Recherches sur Jean Grolier, holy writ on Grolier for a hundred years.

            Between the upper scrolls bearing the club's name the Nathaniel Hawthorne bronze medal issued by the club in 1892 appears in accurate detail. Seven inches in diameter, it was modeled by the Alsatian French sculptor with the wonderful name of Désiré Ringel d'Illzach, a médailleur favored by the conservative element. This was an oblique compliment to Jean Grolier, by the way, for in the learned circles of mid-sixteenth-century Europe, he was well known as a numismatist as well as a bibliophile. Later medallions in the series depicted Lowell, Poe, Emerson, and Longfellow.

            Continuing our tour through the French bookplate, we come to the arched window-like area. Filling the curve at the top is an astounding miniature rendering of the 71- by 78-inch painting by François Flameng, commissioned by Samuel Putnam Avery and completed in 1890, titled "Grolier in the House of Aldus." It hangs in the lobby of the Grolier Club. Despite its anachronistic details, the painting has been reproduced innumerable times, but French's engraved version must take the record for being the smallest.

            The four remaining panels show the printing trades as adapted from Jost Amman's famous woodcuts in his Book of Trades of 1568. We see at work the papermaker, the printer, the designer, and the binder, book arts of keen interest to the Grolier Club.

            In French's small world of bibliophile patrons, bookplate collecting was a great vogue and its literature proliferated. The standard work on Davis is Ira H. Brainerd's Edwin Davis French, A Memorial: His Life, His Art, privately printed in New York in 1908. The Grolier Club owns a copiously annotated copy useful for further research. All of French's extensive illustrative work for the Society of Iconophiles is in the Grolier Club as well, part of the society's massive archives presented in 1939. Finally there is a cache of unedited letters from French to William Loring Andrews, the fussiest of patrons, which should be included in any future publication.

            French's bookplate remained in use at the Grolier Club for many decades, in conjunction with G. W. Edward's original design and numerous special plates for gifts. The plate currently in use was designed in the 1950s by Joseph Blumenthal of the Spiral Press. It is expected to be replaced in the near future by a new plate reflecting the club's centennial. It is certain, however, that no new bookplate will approach the baroque elaborateness achieved by Edwin Davis French's copperplate engraving of 1894.

 Robert Nikirk

Librarian of the Grolier Club, New York City