BOOKPLATES BY BEILBY & BEWICK, A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY

London and New Castle: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 1999. hardcover, dust jacket. Bookplates. large 8vo. hardcover, dust jacket. 384 pages. Forty years before the turn of the 18th century, a small, prestigious bookplate workshop was established, the likes of which were never to be seen again after its employment of one man: Thomas Bewick. To this day, the works of the bookplate shop of Beilby & Bewick are highly collectible and valued in the antiques world. This account offers several hundred bookplates engraved on copper and wood, executed and printed in the workshop over a period of 89 years. It is quite the most extensive and thorough study of this subject in its use of primary sources. The author's lively enthusiasm and careful scholarship have combined to produce a valuable and truly pioneering work on a subject clouded by speculation and optimistic attribution until now. Nigel Tattersfield has taken full advantage of the recently-opened archives of Beilby & Bewick to reveal a vast range of work, from banknotes and inscriptions in silver, to the making of type punches and bottle moulds. The workshop's surviving records are unique in their diversity and quantity. In recent years, the records have been used in the study of engraved silver, pottery transfers, and the preparatory studies for Bewick's wood engravings. Bookplates is fully illustrated, with over 300 examples, and its wealth of biographical information on the owners of the bookplates represents an important contribution to the social history of the north of England.