Heading: (Book Collecting)
Author: Belt, Elmer
Title: Elmer Belt's Sir Thomas More Medal, awarded for "Private Book Collecting, A Public Benefit"
Place Published: San Francisco
Publisher:Gleeson Library Associates
Date Published: 1972
Description:

Engraved medal, approximately 3½x3¼" at its widest points, felt lined display box, approximately 5¾x5¾".

Also included are a medal for Distinguished Service, awarded to Dr. and Mrs. Elmer Belt by the University of California Los Angeles in 1964, 2½" diameter; engraved metal disk encased in an acrylic cylinder, presented to Mrs. Elmer Belt for her service as President of the UCLA Art Council from 1958-1960, approximately 3½" in diameter and 6½" tall; a "Fifty Year Alumnus" medal from Johns Hopkins University, presented to Bruce Belt, 3" in diameter; two ceramic disks with portraits of Leonardo Da Vinci, one with a brown finish, the other with a green glaze finish, 4¾" in diameter.

Dr. Elmer Belt, an internationally distinguished surgeon and Clinical Professor of Surgery in Urology at UCLA was a “collector of ideas” whose dedicated reverence for knowledge is reflected in his extensive libraries. A true bibliophile, Dr. Belt loved the physical book itself. In the 1920s, following his residency with physician and noted bibliophile Harvey Cushing in Boston, Dr. Belt returned to Los Angeles to start his urological practice. Around that time he also began his targeted collecting of materials concerning Leonardo Da Vinci and the Italian Renaissance.  He enlisted the sharp eyes of Jacob Zeitlin and art historian Kate Steinitz who for the next 40 years helped him develop and maintain the rare collection that is now housed at the University of California, Los Angeles.  The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana has been drawing scholars from all parts of the world since 1961 and the collection continues to grow. Dr. and Mrs. Belt also built a number of other libraries, donating an extensive collection that pays tribute to their friend, the writer and activist Upton Sinclair, to Occidental College in 1950. Eight years later they gave the Florence Nightingale Collection to UCLA’s Biomedical Library.  In honor of this spirit of private collecting as a public benefit, Dr. Belt received the Sir Thomas More Medal for Book Collecting in 1972.

Each item with some light wear; overall in very good condition.