Bookplate: Ex Libris K. David

Bookplate in the form of an original etching by German artist Carl Hermann Holzhey (1878–1935, or 1936 according to one source). The spelling of the last name is some­times cited as Holzhe. Little biographical in­for­mation on the artist appears in web searches—but library and museum hol­dings and sales records document that he was commissioned by a number of patrons to produce book­plates and was a fairly prolific printmaker and illustrator.

The bookplate offers a visual pun on the name of the book collector who commissioned the print: EX LIBRIS K. DAVID appears under an image of a fully nude young David from the Old Testament lean­ing on a huge sword with his right hand and holding the head of Goliath in his left. Beyond his feet is a distant cityscape of domed buildings.

One copy of the bookplate is recorded in a museum collection: the Galéria Mesta Bra­tislavy, the municipal art gallery of Bratislava, the capital of the Slovak Republic.

SIGNATURE: Signed in pencil on the margin at right below the lower plate mark: "H. Holzhey"; signed in the plate at lower right: "H. Holzhey".

CONDITION: Left margin of print ragged (as pro­duced—original edge of hand-laid sheet); small chips to print at outside upper corner (0.4 cm x 0.6 cm) & outside lower corner (0.4 cm x 0.3 cm); faint finger mark to lower margin of print; tiny bump from inclusion in paper near upper margin of print; penciled annotation along upper margin of print: "Harmann Holzhey (1878–1935), [illegible] ca. 1920"; penciled annotation to verso of print: "389 6.50"; print tipped onto back­ing with two spots of paste on upper margin of verso.