Ex Libris

I often purchase used hardcover books because they consistently cost much less than new paperback editions of the same title. Occasionally there will be a bookplate inside, also known as ex libris, Latin for “from the books of...”

This handsome bookplate was a happy surprise waiting for me to discover inside the front cover of Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya, published in 1954. The strong figure in the foreground is leaning against a tree which may symbolize knowledge. Behind him, on the left, is the fertile countryside. On the right one sees a city with factory smokestacks and a railway along the edge of town. I wonder what the book’s first owner, Marjory F. Collins, thought about the image and why she chose this particular bookplate design for the books in her library.

Bookplates have long been objects of collection; at the present time more than 50 national societies of ex-libris collectors exist, grouped into an International Federation of Ex-libris Societies (FISAE) which organizes world-wide congresses every two years.