The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 8, February 22, 2004, Article 8

NUMISMATIC BOOKPLATES

  Last week's item about bookplates prompted David
  Gladfelter to write: "In building a library one acquires, with
  the books, the bookplates of the former owners. They give
  the books a certain cachet. Frank and Laurese Katen,
  Armand Champa and Harry Bass had extensive working
  libraries that are now widely dispersed, with their bookplates,
  to many appreciative new owners. Other books in my library
  have the bookplates of institutional libraries such as ANS,
  ANA and the Library of Congress (sometimes stamped
  "withdrawn" so you won't be suspected of having purloined
  them). My favorite bookplate is that of Doctor Pierre Bastien,
  a noted academic numismatic author, who recently disposed
  of his library in several George Kolbe sales. It is, appropriately,
  in the form of a coin, the obverse bearing the image of a woman
  (Cleopatra?) feeding a snake, the reverse with comic and tragic
  masks, a scroll and a pen upon a manuscript. I now have and
  use Dr. Bastien's set of "Numismatic Literature," beautifully
  bound in Old World style bindings and kept on a chestnut
  bookcase in a garret dormer. I have never met this gentleman,
  but hope to, and would say to him that using his books to do
  a literature search makes the task a pleasant experience. The
  bank note engraver Abner Reed engraved his own bookplates,
  with the sly inscription "With welcome use-but use with care.
  the wicked borrow but never return."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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