Martin Philipp was born in 1887 and attended art college and the Art Academy in Dresden. Philipp’s particular talent, noted by his teachers, was for small scale prints and drawings, especially of animals: Philipp spent much of his time as a student visiting the local zoo. Many of his prints contain charming and humorous studies of owls, emus, cats and especially monkeys which seemed to hold a special fascination for him. The original sketch in this collection is of a monkey. The cactus also makes an appearance - he was a keen collector and cultivator. And there are landscapes, portraits and domestic scenes: the range of subject matter is wide. Philipp’s work, at first glance, seems modest and somewhat minor key, which is often the case with small scale engravings and woodcuts and, after all, a lot of these prints in this collection are greetings cards (particularly for New Year) or address notices so are intended for wholesome family consumption. But there is another side to Philipp which found expression in many of his bookplates. It is as a designer of Ex Libris that he is perhaps now best known and here he could indulge the private passions of his bookish clients. There is much erotica on display here from the fairly gentle to rather fruity. It is thought that he produced about 130 bookplates so this collection of 83 prints represents a sizeable proportion of the whole. Philipp clearly enjoyed the somewhat esoteric world of the Ex Libris with its obsessive collectors and their tendency to swap plates with each other as stamp collectors do. One of Philipp’s clients was Gianni Mantero.