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Bookplate Index by Library or Collector |
Cleveland Public Library ". . . I would prefer not to have so much ado about the books which I
may give the library," implored John Griswold White (1845-1928). He
began quietly in 1885 with a gift of four books and 122 maps, and during
the next forty years he was successful in donating over 50,000 volumes of
folklore and Orientalia to the Cleveland Public Library without much ado.
Eventually his contributions of books became too substantial to disguise,
and today they are noted research collections. White, a Cleveland
attorney, was a member of the library's Board of Trustees for many years
and served as its president (1884-1885, 1913-1928). The Cleveland Public
Library had only been founded in 1869, and White's leadership on the board
helped to put an end to a rough start and to convert the library into one
of the largest public libraries in the United States. White's
participation on the board and his own intellectual bent also positioned
him to take an extraordinary role in the development of the library's
collections. White and his
father enjoyed playing mental chess games during long walks together; his
personal book collecting grew out of this youthful interest in chess.
Among the collection's archival resources is a letter White wrote to a
friend in April 1925 recalling that he had started collecting chess books
in 1870. Alice N. Loranth, head of Fine Arts and Special Collections at
the Cleveland Public Library, noted in one of her many presentations and
articles on the White Chess and Checkers Collection that White collected
chess books because he viewed them as an "educational vehicle" that
allowed him to travel "in many centuries, through many countries and
cultures.'' Perhaps it was his immersion in those chess "travels"
that introduced and strengthened his interest in his other areas of
collecting—Orientalia and folklore. In any case, he collected in all
three areas with intensity, personally poring over dealers' catalogs and
ordering books. He examined them all carefully when they arrived, reading
most before he sent them over to the Cleveland Public Library to be added
to the collection. That is, he sent them all but the chess books. Those,
some 12,000 by his death, he kept at home, and from there he shared the
chess collection with researchers, providing the reference service himself
and carrying on an extensive correspondence with chess scholars and
chess lovers. His collection's reputation was soon established, and by
1913 it had been identified as the world's largest by the noted British
chess historian Harold J. R. Murray. The collection retains that
distinction today. Motoko B. Yatabe Reece documents the results
of decades of comprehensive chess collecting, first by White and later
by the Special Collections staff of the Cleveland Public Library, in her
dissertation (University of Michigan, 1979). The White Collection boasts
early manuscripts, including an A.D. 1221 Arabic chess manuscript;
incunabula; multiple editions of almost every chess book, among them Ben
Franklin's The Morals of Chess (Philadelphia, 1786); and over 1,300
periodicals, of which 192 were current in 1990. The periodicals include
the first chess magazine, La Palamède (Paris, 1836-1839, 1842-1847); the
first English-language chess magazine, The
Philidorian (London,
1837-1838); and the first American chess The Chess Palladium and
Mathematical Sphinx (New York, OctoberDecember 1846). One also
finds bound volumes of clipped chess columns from 1818 to the 1950s,
association copies, photographs, and modern manuscript materials that
include letters of other collectors, chess masters, and chess scholars.
The collection of ephemera, such as advertisements, catalogs, pictures,
cartoons, and programs from chess tournaments, is invaluable. The U.S.
Chess Federation has provided the collection with tournament rating
records from February 1971 to March 1977. Chess in poetry is represented,
and chess in literature is emphasized. Most recognizable to the average
library user is Alice through the Looking Glass; most notable to
the scholar are the over 160 editions of François Rabelais's Gargantua
et Pantagruel. The John G. White Chess and Checkers Collection, of the
Fine Arts and Special Collections, Cleveland Public Library, alone
contains over 30,000 volumes, a substantial portion of which were listed
in its two-volume printed catalog, Chess Collection (Including
Checkers) (Boston: G. K. Hail, 1964). John G. White had no personal bookplate for his chess collection; the
Cleveland Public Library used the chessboard bookplate shown on this
issue's cover until 1980. Measuring 3 3/4 inches high by 2 3/4 inches
wide, with chess pieces surrounding the board on which the motto
"Bequest of John Griswold White, 1845-1928, Devoted to Chess" is
inscribed, the bookplate is believed to have been designed by Gordon W.
Thayer (1887-1956), who became the first head librarian of the John G.
White Collection in 1916. Thayer began cataloging the folklore and
Orientalia books, and worked successfully with White until the collector's
death. White willed his 12,000-volume collection of chess and checkers to
the library, endowed his collections, and incorporated a detailed
collection development policy into his will to ensure the future of the
collections. Thayer became the first librarian faithfully and
energetically to carry on John G. White's collecting traditions for the
Cleveland Public Library. Judith
Ann Overmier University
of Oklahoma
[Originally published in Journal of Library History, vol. 26, no. 4 (Spring 1991): 608-610.] |
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