I started this blog with an entry stating that very often, people I meet don’t know what bookplates are. And this is true. However, my friends have also popped up with Antioch bookplates they have used, sometimes for years.
When we first launched our Facebook page, a friend of mine from high school (many moons ago) posted this photo on our page of a book of his from years ago, with design B213 inside. This bookplate, by famous calligrapher Raymond DaBoll, was introduced by the Antioch Company in the mid 1960s, just a decade before we were in high school, and has been a bestseller ever since. This bookplate would have been printed by the Antioch Company when they were still printing non-personalized bookplates to be available in retail stores. We print a personalized and non-personalized version of this design.
A neighbor, after hearing about Bookplate Ink, looked through his library of books that had belonged to his grandmother. In the classic “Good Housekeeping” cookbook,
her favorite which he says she used every day, he found an old Antioch bookplate which we are still printing as design M777. This design was introduced by the Antioch Company in the 1950s. 
As an early Christmas present, this week I gave him a box of bookplates with this same design, but personalized with his name. The look on his face when he opened the box was priceless to me. He was so happy to have this connection to his grandmother.
And then there’s me. When I was thirteen, my mother gave me a box of non-personalized bookplates, design B208, for Christmas. 
One of our most popular designs, this adaptation of German Romanticist painter/poet Carl Spitzweg’s famous satirical painting “The Bookworm” was originally published by the Etchcraft Company. It was introduced by the Antioch Bookplate Company in the 1950s. When I moved to Yellow Springs, Ohio, and started working with bookplates in 1990, I was amazed to see this design and realize I had come full circle.
Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah to all our readers and customers!