Bookplates and Hiram E. Deats

Hiram Edmund Deats (1870-1963) was an important figure in both the philatelic world and the library world which makes him of special interest to a collector of postal librariana. I wrote a previous post about Deats on March 12, 2011. This post is prompted by my acquisition of two artifacts that relate to the interest of Deats in bookplates. The first is his personal bookplate (on the left). The bookplate was designed by Edmund Henry Garrett. The bookplate shows the Greek deity Hermes bowing before four women representing four continents. On the lower right of the bookplate is a group of books including a stamp album. A copy of the bookplate is included in the collection of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana.  [Note: This bookplate also exists in a reddish color. Deats had at least three other personal bookplates at various times in his life.] The second artifact (see below) is a postal card mailed from Plymouth, England to Deats at his home in Flemington, NJ on July 20, 1893. The postal card was mailed by W. H. K. Wright, Secretary of the Ex Libris Society in London, England (which became defunct in 1908) and Editor of the Journal of the Ex Libris Society. Wright covers two topics in his message on the postal card to Deats. The first topic relates to the book Ex Libris Imaginaire which he has purchased for Deats from its author L. Joly of Paris, France. The second topic concerns a lot of 1800 bookplate examples which Wright has sent to Deats in "three packets securely fastened and sealed".  Wright refers to this lot of bookplates as the "last lot" which indicates that previous lots had been sent. I came across an entry in WorldCat for a publication authored by Deats titled The collection of American and foreign bookplates of H. E. Deats ...sold 1909. A microfilm copy is located in the New York Public Library. More about the philatelic and library connections of Hiram E. Deats can be found in this article in the American Philatelist.   I also have a page on the Library History Buff website with more information about Deats.