Style No. 10 stock bookplate design by John D. Morris & Company, 1907. Collection of Bookplate Trade Brochures (BKP 121), Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, Yale University.

Having a bookplate of one’s own could be as simple as ordering it from a catalog.

Current exhibitions that feature selections from the Yale Bookplate Collection will be announced here.

Upcoming exhibitions that feature selections from the Yale Bookplate Collection will be announced here.

Constructing a Pictorial Identity: Bookplates in the Golden Age of Collecting, Sterling Memorial Library, May 15 - October 6, 2017.

This student-curated exhibition by Olivia Armandroff '17 features both process materials and finished bookplate designs by local New Haven engraver William Fowler Hopson (1849-1935), Call # BKP 35 and BKP 47.

The Artist and the Garden, Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, June 5 - September 15, 2017.

This exhibition features examples of some of the garden- and bird-themed bookplates commissioned by Mrs. Irene D. Andrews Pace, Call # BKP 2.

'Illuminated Printing' William Blake and the Book Arts, Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, March 2 - August 21, 2015.

This exhibition features the last engraving executed by William Blake, which is either a calling card or a bookplate for George Cumberland dated 1827, Call # BKP 61.

Withal the Craft: The Life and Work of Carl Purington Rollins, Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, April 22 - December 6, 2013.

This exhibition featured examples of bookplates collected by Carl Rollins, Yale's first University Printer, as well as a keepsake that features Rollins's personal ex-libris design. 

Latvian Publishing between the Wars, Memorabilia Room, Sterling Memorial Library, September 17, 2012 - January 24, 2013.

This exhibition featured bookplates from the Aleksander Kaelas Collection of Estonian and Baltic Bookplates, Call # BKP 31. The establishment of the Republic of Latvia (1918-1940) sparked an expansion in the Latvian Publishing industry. The multi-lingual publications that flourished in the newly independent nation reflect Latvia’s history and include works printed in German, Russian, and Yiddish in addition to Latvian. Aspiring publishers, here as everywhere in post-WWI Europe, operated within fiscal constraints while attempting to improve the literary environment with the quality of both belles lettres and non-fiction.

[Your Name Here]: The Ex-Libris and Image Making, Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, April 30 - August 17, 2012.

This exhibition featured examples of both historic and modern bookplates with a variety of motifs. It also uncovered how questions of authorship arise in the collaboration between artist and patron as well as in the act of collecting itself. In addition to bookplates, the selections on view included process materials, original sketches, correspondence, publications, and other related printed ephemera.   

Monuments of Imperial Russian Law, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, March 1 - May 25, 2012.

This exhibition featured the armorial bookplate of Catherine the Great [Catherine II (1729-1796), Empress of Russia], from the Irene D. Andrews Pace Memorial Collection, Call # BKP 1.

Structure Explored: Architectural Themes in the Book Arts, Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, May 5 - August 26, 2011.

Part of the "Collections in Conversation" series, this exhibition featured the pictorial bookplate of Samuel W. French [The Book Destroyed Architecture], from the Pearson-Lowenhaupt Collection of American and English Bookplates, Call # BKP 30. Read more about this work in the guide to Book Arts and Architecture.