[Your Name Here]: The Ex-Libris and Image Making

Introduction

[Style No. 10 stock bookplate design] by John D. Morris & Company, 1907. Collection of Bookplate Trade Brochures (BKP 121)

The bookplate functions as a mark of possession. This seemingly simple purpose, however, can be quite an undertaking for the book owners and artists who consider the bookplate a vehicle for self-expression, even self-invention. [Your Name Here] examines both historic and modern examples from the Yale Bookplate Collection.

With an estimated one million individual bookplate specimens, dating from the 15th century to the 21st, the Yale Bookplate Collection is one of the largest such collections in the world. Rather than a singular entity, the collection comprises many subsets of collections and an assortment of documentary materials such as original sketches, process materials, correspondence, printed ephemera, and related published materials. For more information, please consult the online guide to the Yale Bookplate Collection.