Bookplates from Auckland Museum
More than 300 bookplates from Auckland Museum's collection: coats of arms, monograms and tiny engraved scenes once pasted inside books.
What it is
A bookplate, or ex libris, is a small print pasted inside a book's cover to show who owns it. Auckland War Memorial Museum in New Zealand holds a large collection of them, which it describes as among the largest in Australasia, including the collection of bookplate scholar Percy Neville Barnett. The Ex Libris board shares 323 pins from it.
Captions are in English and very short: Ex libris (bookplate) by, plus the artist's name.
Why we picked it
Bookplates are a genre few people think about, yet they sit right where books, printmaking, lettering and family history meet. Scroll through and you watch tastes change: stern crests with lions and stars, crowned monograms, tiny landscapes with a cottage, dancing couples, allegorical figures. Some plates carry the owner's name, and you start wondering what was on those shelves.
The museum kept adding to the board until 2025, which makes it large and fairly fresh by museum-Pinterest standards.
Where to start
- Scroll the run of plates by J. J. Langus to see one artist solve the same brief dozens of ways.
- Compare heraldic plates with pictorial ones showing houses, people and animals.
- Watch the lettering, and how the words Ex libris get woven into each design.
- Click through a pin to reach the object record in the museum's online collection.
Who it's for
Book lovers, illustrators and printmakers, designers looking for ideas for a personal mark or logo, and anyone who likes small objects with big backstories.
Quick answers
What is a bookplate? An owner's mark for a book: a small engraving or printed label pasted inside the front cover.
Whose collection is this? Auckland War Memorial Museum in New Zealand; part of it comes from Percy Neville Barnett's collection.
Is it in English? Yes, though the captions are brief and the images carry the board.
