Bookplate: Coat of Arms with Ezekiel Price inscribed

Hurd employed fine-line engraving to achieve intricate detail, characteristic of his work as a silversmith and printmaker. The design is symmetrical and densely ornamented, with precise cross-hatching defining texture in the lion’s mane and foliage. The script lettering of 'Ezekiel Price' is elegantly curved, integrating seamlessly into the lower border, demonstrating Hurd’s skill in combining typography with visual symbolism.

The bookplate was likely commissioned by Ezekiel Price, a Boston merchant and civic figure, to mark his personal library. It entered the collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art through documented acquisitions of colonial American prints. Its preservation reflects growing 20th-century interest in early American material culture and the role of personal insignia in defining identity beyond aristocratic lines.

In mid-18th-century America, bookplates were increasingly common among educated elites and prosperous merchants seeking to assert cultural refinement. Though lacking royal authorization, such designs borrowed European heraldic forms to project legitimacy and continuity. Hurd’s work exemplifies how colonial artisans adapted Old World traditions to suit new social hierarchies in a rapidly commercializing society.

Hurd’s bookplate remains a representative example of colonial American printmaking and personal heraldry. It contributes to scholarly understanding of how identity was visually constructed outside formal nobility. Today, it is studied for its craftsmanship and as evidence of the cultural aspirations of America’s emerging merchant class in the decades before independence.