“Don’t lend your books.” Because if you do, you’ll never get them back – at least this is what experience shows. Sounds familiar, right? One can see many posts on social media of book-owners looking for their books they can’t find at home, hoping that the borrower will be honest and return the beloved item to them.
Even though ex libris may not necessarily be a straight-up cure for the problem, it may give some comfort to bookworms, and allow them to feel that they did everything they could to avoid potential distressing situations in the future. “Ex libris” in Latin means “from the library of” – it’s a firm declaration alluding to the possession and the owner of the book, by using the graphic motifs, signs and symbols characteristic of the owner. In the traditional sense, ex libris, which is of the same age as printing, means a reproduced paper sheet, while today, with the renaissance of the analog, it has become more and more popular once again.
Ex libris is a unique genre: in addition to having an important function, it also amazes users with its aesthetics. It can be our own card, our brand, which we are proudly “stamping” on the first page of our beloved books. How can the „This book is mine” statement be made with visual means? Here are some fine examples from Minsk to Poznań – including the creations of Hungarian Halisten Studio!
Kitti Mayer
design theorist
Minsk, Belarus
Elizabeta Putseyko
Budapest, Hungary
Halisten Studio
Ragusa, Italy
Francesca Dimanuele
Poznań, Poland
Ksenia Vysotskaya
If you’d like to have your own, custom ex libris stamp, here are the Hungarian designers you should be looking for: as we have already mentioned, the designers at Halisten Studio and Judit Káposztás, the designer of ArtiStamp is happy to take on custom orders, too!
Favorite interiors of the week_32
HYPE visited Off-Mustra
