Lidmaatschapsbewijs van de Exlibriskring van de Wereldbibliotheek voor 1950 before 1950

This is a membership certificate for the Exlibris Circle of the World Library for 1950, made by Annemarie van Eck. It’s a monochrome print, all stark graphic lines and shapes. I'm thinking about Van Eck hunched over her work, meticulously crafting each line. The paper is likely smooth, and the ink sits right on the surface. Look at how the dark shield is placed, slightly off-center, and how the delicate leaves seem to wrap around it. The Exlibris Circle—that sounds kinda cool, right? Like a secret society of book lovers. Van Eck's print has a formal yet kind of mysterious air, that makes me wonder what it would have been like to be a member. We, as artists, are always in dialogue with what came before. Someone, somewhere, showed Van Eck a thing or two about line and composition, and now she's passing it on to us.