Vince

Bookplates designed by Roger Fry REF 4/5 Image Courtesy of the King's College Archives


King's College Archives

When entering the Kings College Archive, it was amazing to see the documents propped up and displayed the way that a museum would have the documents but without a glass display case housing them. When looking at the bookplates that Roger Fry made at the Kings College Archive Center, gave a better perspective of Roger Fry. Through Dr. Foster's lecture, I initially got the impression that Roger Fry was not the best artist, but after looking through his bookplates, it is clear that he had some thought and creativity that resembled that of a true artist. The bookplates themselves either had the texture of postcards or were just fragile pieces of paper. The bookplate art was meant to identify on the front cover who the books belonged to. The term “ex libris” which is written on the front of a book means “from the books [of]” and then the name of the owner is written as well. The bookplate tells the story of the owners, specifically one bookplate that was labeled “Cecilia Widdrington” had an angel that was covering the eyes of the beholder and he was standing upon “logic” but right above him was the “metaphysic.” It gave me the feeling that there is a place where reality and logic can be misleading, and that there are ideas that might be controversial and inexplainable, but achievable in the future. Roger Fry reminds me of Peter Walsh because of how involved Peter is in the art world and how critical he is about aesthetics. A quote from Mrs. Dalloway on page 4 reminds me of Roger Fry because of how thoughtful Peter is when talking about Clarissa Dalloway: " In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June." Peter Walsh talks with such strong imagery that it reminded of Roger's artistic bookplates. The bookplates smelled of an old, archaic book.  This showed me a new side of Roger Fry that I would have not understood if it was not for the exhibition at Kings College. I think I like this experience at the archives better because of an exhibition that was presented to us. It makes it simpler to pick out pieces of work that pertained to the Bloomsbury group. Especially with the little descriptions for each document or piece of work curated by the archivists, made it easier to understand their context of them. 


Woolf, Virginia, et al. The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway. Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2021.