This wonderful collection of ex libris relate to the Vienna Secession and Hungarian Secession. Dating from around 1900 to 1925—the heyday of bookplate production and collecting—they showcase a fabulous array of Art Nouveau designs, incorporating popular motifs such as sensuous naked bodies, frolicking nymphs, and organic fronds and foliage, along with Art Deco sunbeams and flattened blocks of colour.
The collection includes designs by some of the leading graphic artists associated with the Secession movements in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the early 20th century. These designers were at the cutting edge of European Modernism, rejecting the Academic, historical styles of the establishment, and advocating a 'total art', that unified painting, architecture and the decorative arts.
Austrian artists in the collection include Emil Orlik (1870–1932), Franz von Bayros (1866–1924) and Erhard Amadeus-Dier (1893–1969). Emil Orlik studied alongside Paul Klee, was a friend of Franz Kafka and Rainer Maria Rilke, and is known for his portraits of leading figures of the time, such as Albert Einstein, Leon Trotsky and Marc Chagall. Franz von Bayros was an Austrian commercial artist, illustrator and painter, who belonged to the fin de siècle Decadent movement, often utilising erotic themes and phantasmagoric imagery. His work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Erhard Amadeus-Dier studied at the Vienna School of Applied Arts and at the Vienna Academy. He worked as a porcelain designer as well as a graphic artist.
Hungarian artists in the collection include Josef von Diveky (1887–1951) and Attila Sassy (1880–1967). Josef von Diveky became renowned for his graphic work, such as book illustrations and ex libris, which clearly shows the influence of Aubrey Beardsley. Attila Sassy, known under the pseudonym Aiglon, studied in Budapest, Munich and Paris. He was one of the leading artists of the important Hungarian artists' colony at Nagybánya. Many of his works are in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts in Hungary.
By their nature, the bookplates create a link between the artist and the book collector for whom the plate is designed, and there are also many fascinating owners in the collection: from the eminent German artist Hans Thoma (1839–1924), to the figures associated with the Vienna Seccession, such as the photographer and gallerist Emma Bacher (1868–1953), who was a friend of Gustav Klimt.
