Bookplates have long been used by libraries and individuals to record ownership and to ensure that a book is returned to the lender. These decorative labels are affixed inside the front cover or front pages and, particularly for a library, bear the institution’s name, and in the case of dedicated collections, the name of a sponsoring donor.
The bookplate employed for many years at the Clark Library is unsigned. But the name of the designer is found in The Bookman, a publication issued for the Friends of the Library of the University of Portland, October 1946 issue, p. [5]. There Colista Dowling (1881-1968) is credited with designing the graphic. Dowling worked as a commercial artist in Portland for sixty years and was known for watercolors depicting city and coastal scenes, book illustrations, and bookplates.
Dowling’s bookplate pictured here was adopted for the general collections of the Library. As seen in this reproduction, her design incorporates visual images meant to evoke University and Northwest tradition. The left panel of the triptych represents the early missionaries to the Northwest; the panel on the right pictures the coming of the Holy Cross Fathers. The central panel depicts the Cross, as a benignant sun, a guiding light for the University as it makes its home in the unspoiled horizon of trees, river, and steppe stretching toward Mt. Hood. The seal at bottom-left is that of the Library. The Holy Cross seal is depicted under the right panel.
For most of its history, books in the Clark Library were adorned with one of these bookplates as part of book processing, but this practice has now been given over to stamps inking the Clark Library and University of Portland names on end pages and inside front cover. Present day library patrons will still find books with vintage bookplates in the library stacks. A reprint of Dowling’s vintage bookplate is used today to recognize donors giving $100 or more to the library during the University’s annual PilotsGive campaign.
Reference:
Allen, Ginny. “Colista Dowling (1881-1968).”The Oregon Encyclopedia. https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/dowling_colista_1881_1968_/#.YtmqdHbMLIU. Accessed July 21, 2022.
Land Acknowledgement
In these 1940s representations we see the land stretch out in unbroken horizons; in fact, even in 1901 the city of Portland filled the foreground between the Bluff and Mt. Hood. And before that too, other people enjoyed these lands. As stated in the University’s Diversity documents: We acknowledge the land on which we sit and which we occupy at the University of Portland. “The Portland Metro area rests on traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River creating communities and summer encampments to harvest and use the plentiful natural resources of the area” (Portland Indian Leaders Roundtable, 2018). We take this opportunity to thank the original caretakers of this land.
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