EX LIBRIS. - A mark consisting of a small label generally affixed to the endpaper of the front board of a book and indicating, by means of a name or a symbolic figure, its owner.
Its use goes back to manuscripts, where the name of the possessor is found on the guard leaves, and it was transmitted unchanged to incunabula. In its present form it seems to have appeared as early as the 15th cent., but the oldest dated e. l. is from 1516. The design was initially produced by the woodcut process; in the 17th and 18th centuries engraving prevailed, at the beginning of the 19th lithography, after which woodcutting again came into vogue. In recent times the e. l. has become an object of scholarly study and collecting; the largest collection is that of the British Museum (100,000 specimens).
The superlibros differ from e. l.; they consist of the name or device of the owner of a book impressed upon the binding.
BIST.: Studies on e. l. are very numerous: for all of them reference may be made to the specialized bibliographies of E. Budan (2nd ed., Leipzig 1908), A. A. Vorstermann V. Oyen (Arnhem 1910), G. W. Fuller (Spokane, Washington 1926), and to the essay published in the Catalogo della mostra nazionale di e. l., Florence 1928, pp. 21-31. Add: C. Ratta, L'e. l. italiano contemporaneo, Bologna 1934. Alessandro Fratesi