My previous two posts concern the provenance of an Apocalypse manuscript owned by Henry Huth. As with most books from the Huth library, it has an oval gilt leather bookplate like the one above, with the legend "EX MVSÆO | HVTHII".
Above this, an oval shape approximately 50×40mm, and vestiges of paper, show where another bookplate has been removed from the upper area of the front pastedown.
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“Huth books are easily recognised by the oval book-plate pasted inside the upper cover of each volume. A little above this label will be observed in many volumes the trace of another book-plate, also oval and slightly larger, which he removed and replaced by the one he finally adopted.”I think that de Ricci may be incorrect to suggest that Henry Huth made the change: I suspect that Henry Huth used a paper oval bookplate with his own name, and after inheriting the library, his son Alfred replaced it with the more generic gilt leather “Ex Musæo Huthii” bookplate, which does not name either of them specifically.
Several colours of leather were used, including red (above), brown, and white:
[Update, 31 March 2023:] Orsi Mednyanszky, of the Walters Art Museum, has kindly been in contact and sent me an image of a black label, found in their incunable copy of Breydenbach's Peregrinatio:
The use of the words “Ex Musæo” on a bookplate is quite unusual, but the phrase was also used by one of the greatest collectors of illuminated manuscripts, a contemporary of Henry and Alfred, whose bookplate reads “Ex Musæo Henrici Yates Thompson”:
[For a explanation of the price-code used, see this post]
Most bookplates (including Yates Thompson's) and book-labels are printed on paper and are rectangular, so it seems possible that the wording, the oval shape, and the use of gilt leather of different colours by Henry and Alfred Huth were all inspired by the oval gilt leather bookplates of another famous book collector, discussed in a previous post: Paul Girardot de Prefond (1722–c.1785?):
Incidentally, this might be a good opportunity to explain the "MS. e Mus." shelfmark used at the Bodleian Library:
Most bookplates (including Yates Thompson's) and book-labels are printed on paper and are rectangular, so it seems possible that the wording, the oval shape, and the use of gilt leather of different colours by Henry and Alfred Huth were all inspired by the oval gilt leather bookplates of another famous book collector, discussed in a previous post: Paul Girardot de Prefond (1722–c.1785?):
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| Olive morocco |
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| Red morocco |
Incidentally, this might be a good opportunity to explain the "MS. e Mus." shelfmark used at the Bodleian Library:
"In 1655 Thomas Barlow (Librarian 1652-60) formed the class in Musaeo, i.e. manuscripts kept in the cupboard in the Librarian's study. ... When the manuscripts were moved ... the name of the collection was changed to e Musaeo." [source]
[Added, 17 Jan 2024:] A blogpost at http://histoire-bibliophilie.blogspot.com/2024/01/la-collection-de-henry-huth-1815-1878.html (archived at Archive.org) discusses the Huths as collectors, and at the very end has some comments about the booklabels.
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ReplyDeleteStephen Parks, in his introduction to "The Elizabethan Club of Yale University and Its Library" (Yale UP, 1986), p. 20, states that the label was added for the posthumous sale. He provides no evidence for this; perhaps it was common knowledge at the time, but I haven't been able to turn up any information on-line. Even if that was the case, an older "Henry Huth" label might well have been removed at that time. But it seems strange that De Ricci would not have mentioned this (nor did William A. Jackson annotated De Ricci's comment, in his heavily annotated copy of De Ricci's work).
ReplyDeleteThank you. The use of different colours of leather seems odd to me if they were added for the purposes of the sale. Also, it is notable that the books bequeathed to the British Museum (and thus not passing through the saleroom), also have the bookplate.
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