Friday 13 February 2009

From Bookplates to Andy English

As if I was only born yesterday, I am very curious when I found the word bookplates for the first time. I happened to stumble upon the word when surfing for rubber stamp carving on the net. It is very common to find a bookplate written with the words "Ex Libris" and a name, or a blank space to write a name on it. "Ex Libris" simply means "from the library of" in Latin, and the name as to claim an ownership of a book. So I thought, a bookplate must be a stamp (because my mind still bound to my earlier search), used to stamp on books like what we always see in books borrowed from the library, but I was wrong. It is actually a piece of paper, often pasted on the inner side of a book cover.

I remember my father taught me to write my name on my school books, but I don't remember seeing anyone using bookplates before. So this is new to me, thus I googled for bookplates and find myself awed to see all the amazing detailed bookplate designs. And this search led me to a site, owned by Andy English. There is where I learnt about letterpress! What a coincidence, I have always wanted to know about letterpress since I found some letterpress products in Etsy. What a cool finding! I know the world nowadays are into computers and printers but, I don't know, I find myself hooked with this letterpress thing. Having seen all the letterpress machine, it must be expensive right? Hoho~ nevermind, I'll be just happy with my acto knife and linolium carving tools (am using sharpen wood carver anyway).

Speaking of Andy English, I'm totally stunt to see his engraving work. Check his blog if you want to know what I mean! Eventhough I can draw quite well, but I admit I would feel like killing myself to draw something so perfectly detailed like his engraved art. The shading, textured and details are perfect. Gosh! I had goosebumps. His work is scary! Tabik spring la Andy!


Look! Look! A finished engraving.

I know you've been drawing err..carving lots of trees here Andy. But leaves and grass too?!

2 comments:

Mariuca said...

"Stars are like friends; there's always some around, you just need to find your favourite one."

Happy Valentine’s Day from Wishing on a Falling Star

Lew Jaffe said...

You might also enjoy visiting my bookplate blog
Http://bookplatejunkie.blogspot.com

Lew Jaffe