Studio: international art (8.1896)

Studio- Talk

BOOK-PLATE BY F. L. EMANUEL

Rose and Captain Richard Dane, both decorative
and admirable. A plate in colours by Will Foster
showed a type of heraldic treatment novel so far
as England is concerned. Many, including ex-
amples by John Williams, G. R. Halkett, A. B.
Woodward, J. P. Elmslie and others, although not
new to readers of The Studio, maintained the
interest of a capital display.

The extremely interesting book-plate of the Chief
Rabbi, designed by Mr. Frank L. Emanuel, is in-
tended for the richest library in the United King-
dom, so far as Hebrew literature is concerned. The
eagle represents the German word Adler, a name
conferred on the family of the owner in 1616. On
the body of the eagle is the scroll of the Law, with
two hands in the act of benediction, according to
the priestly use of the descendants of Aaron. The
words in Hebrew beneath signify : " As an eagle
stirreth up her nest." They form the motto of the
Adler family. The crown above bears two Hebrew
letters—"the crown of the sun," indicative of the
office of which Dr. Adler is the incumbent. At
the foot of the plate, also in Hebrew, are the

words, " Napthali satisfied with favour" (Deut.
xxiii. 23), Napthali being the Hebrew equivalent
of Hermann. The initial letter of this quotation
is from the word " Nesher," the Hebrew equivalent
of eagle. In the margin are represented the pro-
duce of the Holy Land, wheat, barley, vine, fig-
tree, pomegranate, and olive. Each corner contains
an object connected with the Jewish ritual: in the
left-hand top corner a Mezuza, a small casket con-
taining a strip of parchment bearing a passage from
the Scriptures declaring the unity of God ; in the
right a Zephellah, a phylactery worn during morn-
ing prayer. At the foot to the left is the Shofer, or
cornet, sounded on the New Year; on the right, a
citron, " the fruit of the goodly tree," used on the
Feast of Tabernacles.

NEWLYN.—It is dim work groping
after the genesis of things—even re-
cent things—there is such a tangle
of prehistoric causes shaping them-
selves out of the formless void. In
the beginning there was a fretwork class carried
on over a fish cellar in Newlyn ; but even that
does not primarily express the case, because it
does not take into consideration the previous
existence of a schoolmaster, a rich man, and a
telegraph clerk, all actuated by the desire to
compete with the devil in finding work for idle
hands to do. Then some artists were drawn into
the competition who seemed to feel the inadequacy
of fretwork or even of wood-carving to keep Satan
at bay, and so copper and brass were introduced,
and little trays and candlesticks, &c, were beaten
by fisher lads in the winter nights in the loft above
the fish-curing yard by the sea.

Then the artists felt that they were technically
very ignorant of the procedure of brass beating,
too ignorant even to teach it! and here the rich
man stepped in—but why should I respect his
modesty ? no one respects mine. Mr. Bolitho,
who represents the end of England in Parliament,
represents locally everything wherein one man tries
to help another. He, feeling strongly the uncer-
tainty of fish-catching as an industry wherewith to
support a large population, sought to temper it
with some crafts that might, while not taking all
the time of the fisher lads, &c, help them in some
degree to an occupation ; and filled with this hope,
a metal-beater named John Pearson, who lives and
makes charming objects of art somewhere in

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