John Cotton Dana and Newark Public Library Bookplates

I was very happy to add the colorful and attractive bookplate for the Newark (NJ) Public Library (shown to the left) to my collection recently. The legendary early library leader John Cotton Dana was Director of the Newark Public Library. Two posts on the blog "Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie" had made me aware of the interest of John Cotton Dana in bookplates. In the first post, Lew Jaffe, publisher of the blog, featured a bookplate for Dana's personal library and requested assistance in identifying the designer of the bookplate. In the second post, Chad Leinaweaver from Newark Public Library's Special Collections Division surmised that Dana may have designed the bookplate himself, and shared another Dana bookplate. He noted that Dana had designed bookplates for the Newark Public Library. As part of a sesquicentennial celebration of John Cotton Dana in 2006, the Newark Public Library created a publication (PDF) which highlighted some of the bookplates personally designed by Dana. On my bookplate, the name Frank M. Snyder appears in the lower right hand corner of the plate. Snyder was an architect and publisher. Dana who was greatly interested in graphic design likely recruited Snyder to design the bookplate. Click here to see my other blog posts about library bookplates and here to see my website page on library bookplates.