A new bookplate for the NYG&B

Fr. Guy Selvester reports on his resurrected Shouts in the Piazza blog that the great Marco Foppoli has designed a new bookplate for the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society. Mr. Foppoli is the most highly-regarded heraldic artist of our day, and the influence of the style of his mentor, the late Archbishop Bruno Heim, is apparent in his work.

The new bookplate depicts a XIXth-century Knickerbocker grafting a branch of an apple tree — representing New York, the Big Apple — onto an oak which is the symbol of history in general but of genealogical studies particularly. The Knickerbocker stands on a pile of books adjacent to the exposed roots of the great oak. The shield depicts the arms of the G&B, which are the arms of the Empire State dexter, impaled sinister with three open books. The dexter half of the G&B arms obviously represents the geographic home of the society, while the sinister half represents the scholarly aims and pursuits of the society.

“I think it’s a clever design,” Fr. Selvester says, “and Marco’s ability as an artist is above reproach.” Marco Foppoli also rendered the arms of the Cardinal Duke of York for the committee convened to organise commemorations of the two-hundredth anniversary of the death of the last Stuart claimant. We have also previously displayed some of his work in our report on Fr. Selvester’s talk organised by the College of Arms Foundation.