Bookplate of Sir Roger Sheafe 19th-20th century

Curator: This is Sidney L. Smith's "Bookplate of Sir Roger Sheafe," currently residing at the Harvard Art Museums. Editor: It feels quite formal, doesn't it? That central oval and the heraldic shield, surrounded by what looks like laurel...a suggestion of history and lineage. Curator: Precisely! Bookplates were status symbols, small engravings pasted into books to denote ownership and, by extension, erudition and social standing. Editor: The oak and laurel wreath is such a loaded symbol – victory, endurance, knowledge. I wonder what Sir Roger wanted to project? Curator: Likely a combination of established authority and intellectual pursuits. The very act of commissioning such a bookplate speaks to his aspirations within a literate, upper-class society. Editor: It's a window into a specific social stratum and their values at a particular moment in time. Curator: Indeed, and the bookplate served a public role in expressing those values through visual imagery. Editor: Looking at it now, it makes me consider what symbols *I* would use. Curator: And how those symbols would be read, and perhaps, misread, by future generations.