Guest Post: Bookish Bookends from Bob and Donna Seecof

I'd like to thank Eve Kahn for her intrepid scouting of blooks. Ever since I met this ebullient N. Y. Times columnist, she has faithfully kept me in the loop on bookish matters and has scouted out numerous blooks online, at fairs and in the press. Most recently she introduced me to Bob and Donna Seecof, authors of a fascinating blog and definitive book on the history of bookends Eve's column (Sept. 19, NY Times) and a link to the Seecofs' Bookend blog are below:

https://bookendcollector.wordpress.com

http://www.schifferbooks.com/bookends-objects-of-art-and-fashion-4931.html

Bob Seecof has put together this post on a selection of blookish bookends for your enjoyment:

We have no Blooks, but we have some bookends that incorporate books, and we will call them Blookends here.  These are not as exciting as Blooks, perhaps, but they are infectious to Blookend collectors. so beware:

1.  Nude on Book. These would be blooks if the nude were concealed within the book, but she is proudly perched on the Blookend because she is a nineteen twenties girl, newly liberated by the feminist movement of her day.

2. Elephant and Books. It is not possible to conceal an elephant in a book, but these are metal replicas of very small books from the Little Leather Library which was sold in the nineteen twenties and  elephants weight the Blookends.

3. Cherub and Butterfly. There is a book in the cherubs left hand.  The red book behind the cherub is meant to support books on a shelf.

4.  Devoted Monk. Monks are a favorite subject for Arts and Crafts style bookends.  This monk reads a book, probably the Bible.  He must be of a mendicant order because he has no shoes.

5.  Mission Padre. These Biookends commemorate the California Spanish Missions that were founded by members of the Dominican and Franciscan orders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  The book below each padre is open to facing pages showing California woodlands and a California mission.

6.  Scopes Monkey. In 1925 John Thomas Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution to High School students in a trial given national publicity.  This forlorn chimpanzee is reading a book inscribed Essays in Evolution.

7.  Darwin’s Ancestor. This ape sits on three books, labeled from top to bottom:  History, New Testament, and Old Testament.  His book is inscribed Origin of Species by Ch. Darwin.

8.  Hiawatha. Arts and Crafts-style bookends sometimes displayed titles or passages from classic books.  Here we have passages from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem-Hiawatha with accompanying pine boughs and pine cones.  

9.  Gerdago Girl. This  lady is dressed for reading deco literature.

Hoo Doo That Voo Doo That You Do So Well?

This post features another object from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (American Decorative Arts) and fortunately, this one is on view for all to see. (The last MMA object posted was the Book Harmonium.) The object record from the Museum's website is below. I'm slightly embarrassed that they don't include the title in the catalog entry, because by some, that could be considered the best part and standard book cataloging practice - especially in this case, as this is one powerful blook! Let me introduce the Hoo Doo Bible in the form of a Bennington Book Flask:

Book flask

United States Pottery Company 
(1852–58)

Date: 1849

Geography: New England, Bennington, Vermont, United States

Culture: American

Medium: Mottled brown earthenware

Dimensions: H. 6 in. (15.2 cm)

Classification: Ceramics

Credit Line: Gift of Mrs. Stanley Herzman, 1984

Accession Number: 1984.395.12

On view in gallery 774

Bennington book flasks have been widely collected and published. They were popular novelty items made in both Rockingham and flint enamel, in many sizes. They frequently have titles impressed on the spine such as: Battle of Bennington, Bennington Ladies, Hermit’s Delight, Suffering and Death, Departed Spirits, Life of Kossuth and many others. All are hefty books with round spines with raised cords, corresponding concave foredges, squares, lines indicating pages on the edges. Some have more details than others, including endbands and tooled lines.