Ukrainian Superlibros

During the Renaissance, Ukraine, just as other European countries, fell under the influence of humanism. As large collections of books were formed, it was necessary to safeguard them against damage with strong bindings and against loss or theft, with various marks of ownership: the ex libris impressed on the binding, sometimes called the superlibros, the ex libris, and the bookplate on paper. Preserved in the Central Historical Archive at Lviv are registers in leather bindings of the fifteenth century embellished with Renaissance ornamental impressed designs. The first superlibros known in Ukraine was impressed on the binding of one of the books in the Historical Archive of the City of Lviv. Dated 1545, it is a circular seal, 67 mm. in diameter, bearing the arms of the City of Lviv and an inscription in Latin. The Lviv historian, Ivan Krip'iakevich (1886-1967), who discovered the superlibros, also saw the seal in other variant forms on seventeenth and eighteenth century books of the Lviv City Archive.

1. The Bishop of Lutsk, Georgius Chwaliczewski

On Polish-Ukrainian Libraries
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Ukrainian lands' came to be under Poland and Lithuania. Numerous original impressed ownership marks remind us of this in the books of the Scientific Library of Lviv State University. Among them is the ownership mark of the wealthy landowner in Ukraine of Polish origin, Stanislaw Lubomirski, who flourished in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. His estates were situated in the former lands of Sofia Ostrozhskii, to whom he was betrothed in 1613—2.2. From 1621—42 Lubomirski was sheriff of Belotserkov near Kiev. A number of books from his library bear a superlibros with the arms of Srzeniawa, encircling which are the initials of S(tanislaw) L(ubomirski) C(onecs) in W(ianisz) R(ussiae).

The monogram superlibros composed of gold-stamped intertwined initials "S" and "A" mark books principally of the seventeenth century which belonged to the Sulkovskii family. And the collection of Prince Mnishek had a heraldic superlibros on the upper front covers of books, also stamped in gold.

Much of interest on the superlibros is to be found in the Catalogue of incunabula compiled by B. I. Zdanevich (Kiev, 1974) and in M. A. Shamrai's catalogue (Kiev, 1995) of early printed books in the collections of the V. N. Vernadskii Central Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (hereinafter: Vernadskii Library). The fundamental libraries of such noted educational institutions as the Pavel Galagana College and the First Gymnasium of the Kiev Theological Academy, Kievo-Pechersk Lavra, the Sofia, Vydubitskii, and Pustino-Nikolaevskii monasteries of Kiev, and other significant collections are part of this greatest library in Ukraine. Many of them have their own superlibros, thanks to which one can follow the social aspect of readership in centuries past, the migration of early printed books, and, most important, their affiliation to private collections.

The Bishop of Lutsk, Georgius Chwaliczewski [1], was an inveterate bibliophile. At the foot of his superlibros lay the Polish Arms of Traby5 depicting three conjoined trumpets. The shield is surmounted by a nobleman's helmet and crown with five ostrich feathers. The Vernadskii Library has four early printed books with the Bishop's superlibros. On the dark brown leather bindings of the sixteenth century are the arms of Traby lavishly embellished in a rectangular border surmounted by a Bishop's mitre and crozier and the infulae (bands) of a Catholic Bishop. Around the arms is stamped: "Georgius Chwaliczewski Episcopus Luceorien" (today the city of Lutsk is the regional centre of the Volhynia Region). The superlibros is 73 mm. in diameter. All are dated: two in 1547 and two, 1548. They are gilt against the ochre colour of the leather, and one of them (paleotype No. 1048) is black against a pale yellow background.

2. The arms of Korczak

On Ukrainian Collections
The noted family of Prince Ostrozhski provided many of the major figures in Ukrainian history, who for centuries were a symbol of the continuity from the Kievan State to Ukraine-Rus. A distinctive feature of the Ostrozhskis was their sense of responsibility to God for the fate of their people. It was a constituent link emphasising the historical-genetic bond with the past and laying the path towards a future Ukraine as an independent power. Konstantin-Vasilii Ostrozhski (1526-1608) was one of the most brilliant and dramatic figures in the history of Ukraine. He was born in the village of Turov in Volhynia and educated at home. At age 27 he became a marshall (senior amongst the military) of the Volhynia lands, and at age 32 settled for half a century as the Voevod of Kiev and elder of Volodymyr. In his younger years he married Sofia, the daughter of a senior councillor of the King of Poland, Count Tarnowski. In those complicated times, when danger threatened the independence of the Ukrainian people, the Prince came to the defence of the native tongue and faith of his ancestors. Ostrog, thanks to him, became the capital of the Orthodox State. The "uncrowned King of Ukraine" (the words of historian Orest Subtelnyi) did not spare money for scholarship. He opened at his estate in Volhynia a printing house directed by the noted printer, Ivan Fedorov. With the opening about 1580 of a school in Ostrog, or an academy as they were called at the time — the first educational institution in Ukraine — from within its walls emanated numerous intellectuals. Among them was Vasil Surazhskii (a graduate of Italian universities). Thanks to him, fifteen publications were issued at Ostrog, among them two booklets in the Church Slavonic language, in 1588 and 1598. One bears the superlibros of Prince Konstantin-Vasil Ostrozhski. This publication, dedicated, first, to a polemic against Catholic theologians on issues of dogma, was well regarded by contemporaries. It symbolised the apotheosis of the Prince's activities. A small superlibros (48 x 33 mm.) depicts the quartered arms of Ostrozhski, crowned by a helmet surmounted by five ostrich feathers [3]. It is identical to other arms of the Prince printed on the verso of title pages of various printed publications [4]. At the top left of the heraldic shield, quartered, is depicted a horseman facing left, running through a dragon. The arms of Georgii Zmeeborets, one of the most ancient, symbolise the defender of Kievan Rus-Ukraine and were used by the Princes Ostrozhski in commemoration of their descent from the princes of Kievan Rus. In the second quarter is a horseman facing right with raised sword. This is the Lithuanian pogon (Arms of the Lithuanian Principality), adopted by the Ostrozhskis in honour of their being linked with representatives of the Lithuanian princes. In the third quarter, lower left, is depicted a pheon set on an inverted crescent; below is a six-Pointed golden star within a golden crescent turned upwards. This arms consists of two Polish arms of Ogonczyk (above) and Leliwa (below), their prescence to be explained as follows: Konnstantin (the father), Prince Ostrozhski, Voevod of Trotskii and Great Hetman of Lithuania returned from seven years of imprisonment in Muscovy; not wishing to have anything in common with a Muscovite prince, he renounced his armorial bearings as a horseman running through a dragon because the Muscovite princes used that symbol, and replaced it with the arms described above. In addition, this was tribute to the memory of his two sons — Ilya (1510—39), married to Beata Kosteletski (Ogonczyk arms) and Vasilii-Konstantin (1526—1608), married to Sofia Tarnavska (Leliwa arms). In the fourth quarter is a pheon over an inverted crescent in base, above which is a cross-piece which comprises a cross under a roof, or anchor, placed above horns.

The Kamenets-Podolsk Historical Museum-Preserve has the Carpenter's Guild book. It has a binding from an entire skin embellished with images of saints at the top. The inner surface of the boards contains Latin inscriptions, from which it follows that the book was made at the expense of the Master of the Guild, Stanislas Samborskii in 1601. Below the inscription is the superlibros of the owner: on the shield a compass between the initials "S.S.". On the inside back cover is impressed the same mark, but in a Renaissance garland with the initials "S.S.C.C."; that is, "Stanislaus Samboritanus Consulus Camenecensis".

Volhynia had long since been a territory with a powerful aristocracy of the Ruriks and Hediminovichs. The small towns of Vishnevets in Volhynia (now Zbarazhskii District in the north of Ternopol Region) gave its name to the noted family of magnates on the left bank of Ukraine — the Vishnevetskii's. Nearby Prince Mikhail Vishnevetskii, together with Prince Konstantin Ostrozhski, achieved a brilliant victory in 1512 against the Tatars. In the Vernadskii Library among the incunabula and early-printed books are publications with the superlibros of the Princes Vishnevetskii. On a brown suede binding at the top in relief is the crowned Koributovskii arms. In an oval below is a gold six-pointed star within a golden crescent with horns below. A gold cross with intersecting extremities surmounts it as a symbol of the supremacy of the Christian faith over Islam. A prince's cap (mitre) on a mantle crowns the composition [5]. The superlibri of the Koribute-Vishnevetskii's dates from the mid-seventeenth century (55 x 44 mm.) and appears unaccompanied on both boards.

Petr Mogila, Metropolitan of Kiev, was a brilliant figure in the cultural and spiritual life of Ukraine. The leading religious figure of the seventeenth century and scion of a noble Moldovan family, son of a Moldovan sovereign Simeon Mogila and a Hungarian princess Margaret, he was born 21 December 1596. As many others of his compatriots, he received his primary education at the Lviv brother's school. He completed studies in Paris and returned to Ukraine in order to make a career as a clergyman. He first arrived at Kiev in 1622, when the Ukrainian Hetman Petr Sagaidachnyi had died from wounds received in a battle against the Turks. In 1627 Moglia was chosen to be Archimandrite of the Kievo-Pecharskii Lavra, and five years later, Metropolitan of Kiev. Just as Ostrozhski, he devoted great attention to enlightenment. He especially watched over the Kiev-Mogila Academy — the first and for a long time the sole higher educational institution in Eastern Europe. The Academy had a great influence as a centre of education and culture for Russia, Belarus, and the southern Slavonic countries. Before his death, the Metropolitan bequeathed his library, enormous for those times, of 2131 volumes to the Academy.

2a. The arms of Korczak(full cover)

The family arms of the Mogilas consisted of two unsheathed sabres in saltire, inverted and with crosses at the extremities. But the arms were never portrayed in this form. They were combined with five other arms and thus comprise the sixth part, of which three were placed above and three below. The Arms of Moldova were placed in the dexter upper portion — the black bull's face between whose horns was placed a star, and with a sun on the dexter and a moon on the sinister side (the sun and moon were not always depicted even); in the nostrils of the head a signet-ring, in the middle of which were two sabres as on the family arms.

In the second quarter was placed the family arms which we already have described above. The third quarter — Elita — depicted three gold lances placed in the form of a star, the two on the sides with points below and the middle one, above. In the fourth quarter are ravens (at that time, given the grave situation of Moldova, it was better to have, instead of an eagle as the symbol of power, a raven, the symbol of longevity), the body turned sinister and the head to the dexter; in its claw a cross, surmounted by an open crown; the raven stood on a cut branch lying on the ground. These are the arms of Wallachia (the old name of Romania). Next to it was the arms of Ostoja: a sword hilt upwards between two addorsed crescents. The last quarter is the Arms of Novina: a boiler-hook, in the middle of which is a sword, hilt upward. The Arms of Moldova and Wallachia were adopted by the Mogilas for their family arms on the grounds that they were once sovereigns of those countries. The Elita Arms were the ancestral arms of the crowned Hetman and Chancellor Zamoiskii; it was accepted as a sign of especially friendly relations with the Hetman, who had succeeded by force of arms during troubles in Wallachia in bringing Ieremia Mogila to power. The other arms were adopted by the Mogilas in honour of the fact that their families were linked with the other families. The armorial shields of Petr Mogila usually were surmounted by a bishop's mitre and sometimes a bishop's hat (the last was depicted on the superlibros). The initials surrounding the superlibros should be read as follows: Petr Mogila, Orthodox, Archbishop, Metropolitan of Kiev, Constantinople Exarch, Pecharskii Archimandrite. The superlibros gold-stamped on the leather boards of the Minea (1629) and the manuscript Arhiereisky Sluzhebnik i Trebnik (1632) are to be distinguished one from the other by dimension, location of the letters, and the writing thereof. Both in all likelihood were done in the 1630s, after 1632, in the Kievo-Pechersk Lavra.

Books and collecting were favourite occupations of Ivan Mazepa (1644-1709) — the outstanding Ukrainian Hetman of left-bank Ukraine. Contemporaries were amazed by his fine library with numerous Latin books and his command of languages. He regularly received and read French and Dutch newspapers. During his rule culture, science, enlightenment, and the arts flourished. When the Battle of Poltava occurred in 1709, in which the Hetman with a view to liberation from the iron embrace of his northern neighbour, Peter I of Russia, took the side of Charles XII, King of Sweden, it was a tragedy not only for the allies, for also for the insecure sovereignty of Ukraine. The Baturino estate of Ivan Mazepa, together with the city, was burned, and so too his library, which he had collected for thirty years. Later anything that was linked with his activity or bore his name was carefully destroyed or carried off to the Russian Empire. Only recently in Lviv was a book discovered, Dmitrii Rostovskii's lives of the saints, on the spine of which there are two leather labels. On one of them is stamped: "Ivan Mazepa Hetman 1700 in Kiev" (in Ukrainian).

The Rozumovskiis were a Ukrainian noble family of the mid-eighteenth century and first half of the nineteenth century. Their ennoblement commences with Aleksei Grigor'evich (1709—71), a herdsman taken to Petersburg to join a court choir who in time became a favourite and later the husband of Empress Elizabeta Petrovna (daughter of Peter I), receiving the title of count for himself and for his entire family. He facilitated the restoration of the Hetmanate in Ukraine and the election as Hetman of his brother, Kirill Grigor'evich (1728-1803) — the last Hetman of left-bank Ukraine (1750—64). The count and general-field marshall received his education in the universities at Konigsberg, Berlin, Gottingen, and Strasbourg, and from 1746—65 was President of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences. However, the coming of Catherine II to power, an implacable opponent of the independence of Ukraine, suspended the Renaissance which had commenced. The last years of his life Kirill Rozumovskii spent in the former Hetman capital of Baturino in political oblivion, economic difficulty, and communion with his books. The count was one of the most enlightened individuals of his day. He ordered many publications through foreign book firms, and his Ibrary was one of the best-known in Europe. The collection, which numbered about 40,000 volumes and was housed in a special pre-mlise at the Iagotin (near Kiev) estate, passed from his heirs to the princes Repin. Part came in the early twentieth century to the Vernadskii Library. One section, reflecting Kirill Rozumovskii's interest in a music and drama theatre created in 1751 at Glukhova, numbered more than 2.300 works of opera symphonic and chamber instrumental music. This was the best orchestra and opera theatre in the Russian Empire. Today the family music collection of the counts Rozumovskii is preserved in the music section of the Vernadskii Library and consists of more than 1500 printed music scores published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and more than 400 manuscript works by European composers. On the catalogues and other publications of the library are depicted superlibri stamped in gold on both boards of the leather bindings: beneath a count's crown is a monogram of three Latin letters "ACR" (30 x 32 mm.) [7]. This superlibros and the inscription on the catalogue of the late eighteenth century was done by hand in the French language and belonged to the eldest son of Kirill Grigor'evich — Aleksei Kirillovich (1748—1832), who had been born in Petersburg. He also studied at Strasbourg University, served at the court of Catherine II, and became a Senator. He was a patron of Moscow University and Minister of Public Enlightenment; he opened a gymnasium in Kiev, a Greek school in Nezhin, and founded an Association of Sciences attached to Kharkov University. Aleksei Rozumovskii collected a large library of books primarily on the natural sciences.

3-4. The quartered arms of Ostrozhski

Many books, especially of Kiev educational institutions, carl readily be singled out from the general mass by the superlibri impressed on the boards of the publications. In the nineteenth century it was accepted to dress books in sturdy leather bindings or to attach a leather cover to a binding in boards on which the author and title of the book were be indicated on the upper portion, below the number of the volumes, and finally, an abbreviation of the name of the library. Such, for example, was the Fundamental Library of the Kiev I Gymnasium, which began in 1789 with the opening of the Chief Public School and Library attached thereto — «F.B.K.R.». From 1913 it began to be called the Fundamental Library of the Imperial Alexandrine Gymnasium and the abbreviation was changed: «F.B.I.A.G.». The Library of Students of the Kiev Theological Academy — «B.S.K.D.A.» — also used a shortened version: «B.S.».

The Fundamental Library of the Kiev Women's Gymnasium also used a superlibros at the end of the nineteenth century — «F.B.K.ZH.G.»; the Library of the Kievo-Pechersk Gymnasium — «B.K.P.G.»; the Library of the Kievo-Pechersk Military Assembly — «B.K.P.V.S.»; and the Library of the Kievo Pechersk Lavra — «B.K.P.L.»; and others.

The Taras Shevchenko Kiev University was founded in 1834.In the nineteenth century it bore the name of the Kievan Saint, Prince Vladimir, and on the books of the university library from the second half of the nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries is the superlibros «B.U.S.V.». On foreign books Latin letters were used: B.U.S.V.

The Kiev Theological Academy (1819-1919) was one of the highest educational institutions of the Russian Empire and an heir of the seat of culture of seventeenth-century Kiev, the Kiev-Mogilev Academy. It occupied the same premises. In its library were valuable antiques and works of art, on the basis of which a portrait gallery was created in 1869 and, in 1872, an ecclesiastical archaeological museum. Three variant superlibri are encountered on books which belonged to the Academy and are now in the Vernadskii Library.

5. A prince's cap (mitre) on a mantle crowns the composition

Similar superlibri are encountered with some frequency. «K.T.B.» designates the Library of the Kiev Central Telegraph Office; «K.O.S.» indicated the Kiev Social Assembly; and «B-7-th ZH-D.B.» was the Library of the 7th Railway Battalion (on the cover of a journal called the Voenno-istoricheskogo vestnika[Military History Herald].
The Pavel Galagan College, founded at Kiev in 1871, was financed by Grigorii Galagan (1819—88), a noted Ukrainian landowner, in memory of his prematurely deceased son, Pavel. He transferred to the College an estate with houses in Kiev and land tracts in Chernigov and Poltava; the College survived on the revenues from those tracts.

The College was an educational institution of the closed-type, intended for eighty persons, of whom thirty would study without tuition costs. The College occupied a medium rung between a gymnasium and a university and operated until the revolutionary events of 1917. The pride of the College was a Fundamental Library, the base of which was the unique library formed by the Ukrainian historian, Nikolai Markevich; it included early printed books and manuscripts. This collection is presently, some 9000 volumes, part of the Vernadskii Library. Many books have embossed on the covers in gold the initials of the College: «K.P.G.».

There also also book labels with the text: «Biblioteka Kollegii Pavla Galagana» [Library of Pavel Galagan College]. In 1898 the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, one of the centres of
science and enlightenment, was founded with the support of the scholarly community in Kiev and assistance of the local administration, merchants, and industrialists. It exists now as a multi-profile educational institution — a National Technical University with four faculties (mechanics, chemistry, engineering, and agriculture). Among its graduates is the internationally noted scientist Igor Sikorskii, who after the 1917 revolution emigrated to the United States and invented the helicopter; the designer of space missile systems, Sergei Korolev; and the great specialist in electric welding, Boris Paton, among others.

Books from the Library of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute [9] had good leather boards, some bearing the initials: «B.K.P.I.».

6. Arhiereisky Sluzhebnik i Trebnik

On the cover of this unique album is an attractive superlibros embossed in gold with the arms of Tarnovskii-Leliwa. The "shield is per pale; on the dexter side, against a blue background is a silver cross and gold crescent with crescents on either side of the cross. On the sinister side, against a red background, a gold six-pointed star under which there is a gold crescent with horns upwards. The shield is surmounted by a noble's helmet and crown above with ostrich feathers, and a gold crescent with a star. The red and blue on the shield are outlined in gold.

At the base of the superlibros has been placed the sinister side of the Tarnovskii family arms which heraldically correspond to the above description. Around the arms is an elegant ornament from colours adapted from Ukrainian carpets. Beneath the superlibros is the inscription in a semicircle «Kachanovka» [10]. The album belonged to the collector and merchant Vasilii Tarnovskii (junior) (1837-1899) and can be dated to the first half of the nineteenth century.

Noted Ukrainian Families of the Nineteenth Century
Many noted representatives of the intelligentsia in various branches of the sciences came from the Lazarevskii family — Vasilii, Ivan, Mikhail, Aleksandr, Fedor, and Iakov. All are from the Shevchenko era, were his valued and close friends who did much to help the poet and artist during his lifetime and to preserve his memory after his death. When "Shevchenko was confined in the fortress [having in view his arrest in 1850] before being sent to remote exile, he wrote many verses on the margins of any book given him to read. He tore out these margins and carried them in his slippers; upon departing gave them to his brother, Mikhail Matveevich, who gave them to me for safe-keeping" — recalled Vasilii Lazarevskii (1817—90).

While in exile in the Kazakh steppe as a soldier who was prohibited to write and sketch, Shevchenko during the first four years of exile wrote underground manuscript verses which again came to Mikhail Lazarevskii (1818-67), a comrade of Shevchenko and author of recollections about him. In the 1860s he obviously with affection ordered a black leather binding gold stamped for them. On the cover of this small book, which together with all of the manuscript legacy of Taras Shevchenko is preserved in the collection of the Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is the superlibros of Mikhail Lazarevskii at the base in gold: «M.A.». The superlibros has been preserved on the modern facsimile edition just as on the original.

7. Monogram of three Latin letters

The scholarly activity of Aleksandr Lazarevskii was devoted to history, geography, economy, statistics, and ethnography of left- bank Ukraine during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which was reflected in his personal library. He carefully collected everything that related to his beloved land. All this Aleksandr had bound in individual albums, of which there were 210 volumes. He also took an active part in the work of a number of scholarly organisations and institutions in Petersburg, Chernigov, and Kiev (Historical Society of Nestor the Chronicler), and was one of the founders of the journal Kievskaia starina.

Concerned about the fate of his unique collection, in 1898 he gave it to the Library of Kiev University. The books are preserved today in a special section of the Vernadsky Library, with the name of the original owner designated. The collection also is of interest for the fact that the covers were covered with fabrics at the end of the nineteenth century and can be studied as models for that alone. Thus, the collection also has artistic and ethnographic value. Among the books presented is a unique 1485 Strasbourg edition, on whose binding embossed in gold is the superlibros of the historian: «A.A.».

Ukrainian Superlibros in the Twentieth Century
Withith the acquisition of independence by Ukraine, its history has begun to return to Ukrainians. Among the flood of literature on an historical theme are publications that were taboo during the Soviet era. This includes above all seminal works of the "encyclopedist of the Cossacks", Dmitrii Iavornitskii (1855—1940). His history of the Zaporozhian Cossacks (Kiev, 1990—91) and other no less valuable and interesting historical studies have been published after a century of enforced interruption.

A world-recognised scholar, historian, archaeologist, folklorist, and writer who truthfully illuminated the history of the Ukrainian people, he headed from 1902—33 the Museum of Antiquities in the Ekaterinburg Province (now the Dnepropetrovsk Historical Museum) and assembled a 75,000 volume collection of exhibits from the history of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. A specialist on the written sources, he conducted searches in the archives of Moscow, Petersburg, Kharkov, Ekaterinoslav, and Warsaw, and was a member of many scientific institutions and societies. He left an enormous scholarly legacy. In the Academician D. Iavornitskii Dnepropetrovsk Historical Museum, one of the oldest museums of Ukraine, founded in 1849, there are, besides his scholarly library, more than 6000 rare Ukrainian and foreign publications of the sixteenth-twentieth centuries. The personal library of Dmitrii Iavornitskii forms the basis of the collection.19 On several volumes of the Zapiski of the Odessa Association of History and Antiquities is his superlibros, his blind-stamped name on leather: «D.I.Evranitzkii».

8-9. Books from the Library of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute

The largest section of the library was devoted to history and geography, publications on the history of diplomacy, memoirs, and biographies, as well as many books on art, being well represented.

It was planned to create a special section in the public library for books given after Marazli's death, but they fell into the general collection. But the collector being a real bibliophile, he has aj catalogue of the library and extensively used bookplates. Only during the last decade has the merchant been given his due and interest been expressed in his legacy, including the library. In a splendid miniature book devoted to Marazli everything has been described that could be found in the State archive of the Odessa Region, Odessa State Public Library, and Odessa Art Museum. We dwell here on the superlibri.

The first modest superlibros with initials of the owner is found in a book of 1842 and dated to approximately 1843-44. The letters "G.G.M." are embossed in gold on calico (23 x 55 mm.) [11]. Only one example is known and appears on the upper part of the cover. The second consists of impressions of the surname of the owner on the spines of volumes. These date from the 1850-60s and are embossed in gold on leather or calico. Many variants exist of dimensions and type fonts. The third dates from 1856-58; it comprises the monogram of the owner below a crown of nobility, being embossed in gold on calico (22 x 27 mm.) and known on three almanacs published for 1856—57. The fourth also originates in the second half of the 1850s, being a monogram of the owner under a crown of nobility embossed in gold on calico (76 x 66 mm.). It is found on more than twenty books published from 1856-58. The fifth superlibros appeared in 1870-74, also a monogram under a crown of nobility embossed in gold on calico (89 x 63 mm.) and known on several dozen titles. The sixth superlibros comes from 1875—78, being the monogram of the owner girdled by a crown embossed in gold on calico (89 x 63 mm.) and existing on several dozen books. The last superlibros dates from 1879-1907. It consists of the monogram of the owner under a crown of nobility, embossed in gold or black colour on leather or calico. The dimensions vary from 20 x 15 down to 18 x 13 mm., with variants in between. Marazli also used book-seals in 1897, 1898, 1901, and 1903-06.

Feokharii Feokharidi (1889-1940), another Greek, also lived in Odessa and loved books and art.21 He had a good library, numbering some 10,000 volumes, a significant portion of which comprised books and journals on art. Among the last were foreign journals such as Studio (England) and Die Kunst (Germany), or the Belgian journal Musee du Livre. Among the books were two large folio Bibles in full leather with Rembrandt etchings published in Holland at the turn of the twentieth century, together with many monographs on individual artists. Most books had printed labels pasted in with inscriptions in Latin and Greek letters, and on the leather covers of bibliophile bindings were embossed superlibri with the initials "Th.Th." or the same in the Greek alphabet. These superlibri date from the beginning of the twentieth century.

10. The superlibros is the inscription in a semicircle «Kachanovka»

"Znachko-Iavorskii is a Ukrainian noble family, the arms of j Kosciesza, the ancestors of whom in the early seventeenth century resettled from Poland to Ukraine". The year 1913 is the date of a bookplate for Olga Znachko-Iavorskaia executed in a precise and spare composition by the Ukrainian artist, Georgii (Egor) Narbut. It depicts the arms of the Bernatskii family placed in a Ukrainian cartouche. The drawing was used for superlibri on bindings of nine specially valuable copies of her book on the genealogy of the Bernatskii family published at St Petersburg in 1913. In all 100 copies of the book the drawing of this superlibros is repeated on page 33 in the form of a headpiece from the bookplate of the author.

Nikolai Makarenko (1877-1938), a leading figure of Ukrainian cience and culture, was one of the defenders of a jewel of Ukrainian culture which fell victim to the Bolshevist regime: the jvtikhailovsk Zlatoversk Monastery, which throughout the centuries was a leading focus for the spiritual life of the people. Soon after the barbaric destruction of the masterpiece built in 1108 by the Kievan Prince Sviatopolk Iziaslavich, the scholar himself was sent into exile and liquidation.

Makarenko received his higher education in Petersburg, where he graduated from the Archaeological Institute and Central School of Technical Drawing. Thanks to his special talents, he went to the Imperial Hermitage, where he worked as an assistent, aide to the curator, and candidate for an established post. In connection with the formation of the Ukrainian People's Republic he moved from Petersburg to Kiev. As a specialist in art history and archaeology he was useful to the young State. His scholarly activity was closely linked with museums. From 1920 to 1925 he worked as Director of the Kiev Museum of Arts, now known as the Museum of Western and Oriental Art, actively occupied himself with the return of museum exhibits taken from Ukraine to Moscow and Leningrad, and carried on his scholarly work. His scholarly interests were directed too towards the study of outstanding monuments of architecture. The "Exlibris Nicolas Makarenko" pasted on the half-title of an album devoted to the frescos of the Ferapontov Monastery by V. Georgievskii recalls one of them. The monogram "M" on the bookplate is evidence of possible authorship of the scholar. The cover, done at the bibliophile's order, has on the cover in addition to the surname of the author and name of the album the superlibros of the owner embossed in gold «H.M.»; that is, Nicolai Makarenko. This album is in the collection of the Poltava art historian, Vitalii Khanko.

Conclusion
Rather little attention is given to the existence of the superlibros although there are many of them in library collections, especially on early printed publications. Moreover, many bibliophiles have bound all possible manuscripts, journals, or books with wrappers in attractive artistically-designed bindings, embellishing them with their own superlibri. But in the absence of a supplementary bookplate, stamp, or seal it is rather difficult to decipher the abbreviated two or more initials of the owner. Many bibliophiles do not think of this. And their names are lost forever.

11. The letters "G.G.M." are embossed in gold on calico

published Nesterenko, Peter at 2005.03.03
written by Nesterenko, Peter