Chronicle of the Kings of England
Item #83945
(THOMAS SMITH BOOKPLATE). BAKER, Richard. A Chronicle of the Kings of England... London: For George Sawbridge, 1674. Folio. 772, [40, index]pp. Old leather, very worn, both boards detached, spine cover crudely repaired with overstitching, edges ragged. Bookplate of Thomas Smith, the first ornamental American bookplate, on front pastedown. Good. Sinclair Hamilton, Collection of Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers, 7: "Probably the first ornamental American bookplate... Earlier plates, of course, had made some use of printers' type ornaments but none contain woodcut ornamentation in so elaborate a style as this. The cutting is better done and the result more elegant-if such a word can be used for work as early as this-than is the case in earlier American efforts at woodcutting such as John Foster's seal of the Colony of Massachusetts or the figure which appears in the Cambridge Ephemeris of 1684. It is, however, very rare." The bookplate, with a floral ornamental border, reads "Thomas Smith Hunc Librum Vendicat. Anno Dom. MDCCVII." Smith (1678-1742) was a Boston merchant and his signature appears twice in the present work, the second time as "Thomas Smith London/London Masons," suggesting that he could have purchased the book himself while in Britain. An altogether wondrous piece of ephemera.
Price: $5,000.00