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Bookplate Index by Library or Collector
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Special Collections, University of California, San Francisco The San Francisco campus, established in 1864 as the Toland Medical College, is unique among the nine campuses of the University of California. It is the only University of California campus that antedates the University of California system founded in 1868, the only campus without a general undergraduate population, and the only campus whose curriculum focuses solely on the health sciences, with schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing, and pharmacy, and graduate programs in most of the health disciplines, including medical anthropology and medical sociology. The Library of the University of California, San Francisco, emphasizes materials in the health sciences and related fields. The special collections unit of the library was established about 1930 and the university archives in 1963 to support research and teaching in the history of the health sciences. They do so with current books and journals and with original materials, including early printed books and journals, manuscripts and archives, photographs and illustrations, audio-visuals, oral histories, and artifacts. The collections are particularly strong in occupational medicine, cholera and other infectious diseases, psychiatry, homeopathy, California, high-altitude physiology, anesthesiology, and Osleriana, as well as anatomy, surgery, physiology, dentistry, medicine, nursing, and pharmacy. The archival holdings consist of the institution’s archives (including historical records of the schools), 125 oral history tapes, and eleven thousand photographs of individual, events, and buildings. Among the manuscript holdings are personal papers of dentists, nurses, pharmacists, and physicians, and archives of local health agencies and institutions (such as the administrative records of three California nursing associations and of medical societies). The special collections division had no distinctive bookplate until February 1986. Before that time, it used the general library’s rather nondescript bookplate; it was a version of a plate originally designed for the University of California, Berkeley campus. There had long been a need for a distinctive plate for the rare and valuable materials and to help physically differentiate the special collections circulating materials, which are housed separately from the rest of the collection. The fortuitous discovery in 1985 of an unusually appropriate printer’s mark in a sixteenth-century book in the collection stimulated the creation of a bookplate for the special collections. The central design of the bookplate was taken from the printers’/publishers’ device of John Wight in The Secretes of the Reverend Maister Alexis of Piemonte: Containying Excellent Remedies Against Diverse Diseases, Woundes, and other Accidents . . . (London: Imprinted by John Kyngston, for John Wight, 1578-1580), published in four parts. It can be pieced together that the book was published under the name of Alexis (Alessio) of Piedmont, which is presumed to be a pseudonym for Girolamo Ruscelli, a scholar and native of Viterbo, Italy, in the mid-sixteenth century, from evidence supplied by two noted reference works (A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave’s A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland & Ireland, . . . 1475-1640. London: The Bibliographical Society, 1963; M. E. Cosenza’s Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of the Italian Humanists. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1962), a standard history (L. Thorndike’s A History of Magic and Experimental Science. New York: Macmillan, 1923-1958), and a journal article (J. Ferguson’s “The Secrets of Alexis: A Sixteenth-Century Collection of Medical and Technical Receipts,” Proc. Roy. Soc. Med., December 1930; 24). The Secretes of Alexis was immensely popular, appearing first in a vernacular edition in Venice, 1555 or 1557, and ultimately going through some seventy-nine editions, including translations into Latin, French, German, and Spanish, by the end of the seventeenth century. The London, 1578-1580, edition of the Secretes of Alexis owned by special collections is an amalgam of the several parts. Parts 1 and 2 were translated from French to English by William Warde (1534-1604?) and carry Wight’s mark at the end of the text. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Warde was a physician, a 1567 graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, and later a reader in medicine and a professor of physic. Part 3, printed by Thomas Dawson (1578), also translated by William Ward, carries the device on the title page and spells the name Wyght. Part 4 (1578), translated by Richard Androse, now proclaims, “Imprinted at London by John Wyght,” and has the device at the end of the text. The first edition of Warde’s translation was published in 1558, and was dedicated (as were subsequent printings) to Warde’s patron, Francis, Lord Russell, Second Earl of Bedford.
The Secretes of Alexis is an example of a genre common for
centuries; it is a compendium of medicinal receipts and advice for the
prevention and treatment of a wide variety of diseases and ill health in
general, as well as recipes for cookery, and for cosmetic, alchemical, and
dye processes. The book is clearly designed for popular consumption, and
the translator notes in his preface to the 1580 edition: For it is desired of
all men to live in healthe of bodie, so it is requisite that Medicine,
bothe preservative and curative, bee had and used emong menne, whiche not
onely comforteth the infirme and diseased bodie, but also putteth the
Soule in rememberaunce of Goddes great power and might, that hath given
suche vertue into thynges growying on the yearth, for Mannes commoditie,
preservation, and health . . . “ The author makes it clear that this is a work of compilation and that the information it contains is “by hym collected out of divers excellent Aucthours.” It includes, among other instructions, those “To make greene ink,” and “To take awaie spottes from the face,” as well as receipts for “Pilles of a marveilous operation and vertue against the Sciatica,” for a “preservative against the plague, often times proved,” and “To kill the bottes in horses.” John Wight (d. 1589) is not a well-known figure in printing history. H. W. Davies, in Devices of the Early Printers, 1457-1560 (London: Grafton, 1935), identifies him as a member of the Draper’s Company and a London bookseller, as well. Wight’s device was used for ten years, 1578-1587, although his printing business began earlier, about 1551. His device did not appear at the front of the first part of the 1580 edition of Secretes of Alexis; that title page was reserved for Kyngston’s own device. However, the first part contains six books, and Wight’s device did appear at the end of the tables indexing the text. It also appeared at the end of the second part, on the title page of the third part, and at the end of the fourth part. The roundel of Wight’s device is approximately 8 x 7.7 cm. with a double outer and inner line. Between the lines is the text “Welcome the wight that bringeth such light.” In the center, Wight is seen, dressed in handsome robes, the edgings of which are faced with fur from the collar to the hem. He stands between his initials, I. And W., and he holds in his hands a sturdy book with open clasps. On the cover of the book we read, in three lines, SCI EN TIA. As Davies noted, judging by Wight’s appearance in the roundel, Wight was a substantial man, both in girth and dress. The latter denotes what was probably his considerable standing in his community (or wish to convey such). But the word inscribed on the book cover also tells the reader that intellectual attainments were equally important: scientia = knowledge = power. Although scientia did not approximate “science” as we know it today, it is probably no accident that he chose that word, and it describes his motto, science = light, or the enlightenment that is derived from knowledge. The device also offers an interesting word play. The word “wight” is defined by the New England Dictionary On Historical Principles (Oxford: Clarendon, 1888) under two headings: one is “being” or “person”; the second is strong, mighty, powerful. The clear implication is that John Wight, the bookseller and man of affairs is also the “wight” – the strong and vigorous person who offers the public the opportunity to obtain, through Wight’s publishing efforts, access to the knowledge which is power. In this case, knowledge about maintaining health and other practices offers readers the opportunity to control their own vitality and well-being. That Wight/Wyght was a shrewd businessman seems clear; he appropriated for himself a very popular book, which undoubtedly contributed substantially to his fortunes financially and in the community.
A reproduction of Wight’s device with thoughts about its
utilizations in a bookplate was taken to Peter Koch, a San Francisco Bay
area fine printer. Koch collaborated with Christopher Stinehour to produce
the final design. The bookplate was printed in two versions, one a
standard size of 6.5 x 11 cm. with border; the other, for smaller books,
without the border, 5 x 7.5 cm. The resulting bookplate, with its relevant
historical and intellectual context, is one very appropriate for the
special collections and University Archives of the University of
California, San Francisco. Nancy
Whitten Zinn The Library University of California, San Francisco [Originally published in Libraries & Culture, vol. 29, no. 3 (Summer 1994): 326-329.]
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| Last updated June 30, 2001 |
