GALLERY OF ILLUMINATIONS AND
BOOKPLATES

When Robert Strong Woodward first moved back to Massachusetts after an accident which paralyzed him from the waist down, he moved into a small building on the edge of his uncle’s farm in Buckland and converted it into a studio dwelling.   Trained as a civil engineer he had little experience in creative artistic work, but he began making bookplates which were still very much in vogue at that time. (His dream was to eventually become a landscape painter.)  These he designed with great diligence, including pertinent information about the person who was to put these into each book in his library.  A bookplate is a reminder of ownership.  For hundreds of years, beginning back in the middle ages, lovers of books were encouraged to have their own bookplate. The designs, when completed, often after several months, were then sent off to an “engraver” who etched them onto copper plates which could be used to print the designs onto paper.  This process also often took several months to complete.  The proud owner would then paste a print onto the inside front cover of each book in his library. 

Illuminations, on the other hand, were one of a kind.  These were small framed-under-glass encapturements of selections from poems embellished by fancy calligraphy. Before the invention of the printing press the monastery monks, who painstakingly made copies of the Bible, developed this art of artistic lettering and embellishments. A typical example by RSW is pictured in My Heart is Like a Singing Bird.

Very few of Robert Strong Woodward’s bookplates and illuminations have survived to today. Both the bookplates and the illuminations have the initials “R” and “W” carefully concealed in the intricacies of the drawings. If you own or know about one, please let us know so that it can be added to our web collection

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(Courtesy of the Robert Strong Woodward letters and papers,
1890-1985, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.)