Henry R. Plomer

“ They are not only spirited; but they are worthy of the great work in which they appeared. No. 234 in Bagford’s volume is a head-piece, the design of which is classical in treatment—spirals of flowers and foliage of a highly ornate character springing from a central stem, which consists of the body of a child emerging from foliage with his hands uplifted in terror of the two lions who are apparently coming for him on either side. ”

“ John Windet placed on the title-page of H. Swinburne’s Briefe Treatise of Testaments and Wills, 1590, a curious little decorative block, in which two happy-looking cherubs [86] sitting under overhanging sprays of foliage that are part of the contents of an urn or basket of fruit and flowers are busily playing, one a guitar and the other a viol or violin, but whether they are serenading the lady whose head forms part of the design one is left to guess. This block was perhaps in reality a tail-piece. ”

“ Borders, then, shall be our first subject of study, but it has been decided that this study shall be confined as far as possible to built-up borders, i.e. those made up of small printers’ ornaments, such as the fleuron, or such as consisted of two or more decorative blocks. It has been considered, and perhaps rightly, that borders of one piece, such as that which surrounds the title-page of the 1561 edition of Chaucer’s Works, whether cut in wood or metal, belong rather to a history of engraving than to a work on printers’ ornaments. ”

“ It is self-evident that, until there were enough printers at work in Europe to keep them going, letter foundries, as such, did not exist. Besides, we know from early descriptions and drawings of printing offices that they each contained a ‘casting-house,’ probably a small ante-room in which type could be recast, and therefore in which on emergency small ornaments could be cast.
This is what Mr T. B. Reed says on the question [3] : “Respecting the developement of letter-founding as an industry there is little that can be gathered in the history [12] of the fifteenth century. ”

“ Whether the printers were their own copyists, or whether they employed some one else to do this part of the work, we cannot say, but quite early in the sixteenth century, and from thence onwards to the close of the seventeenth, almost every head and tail piece and initial letter was copied and copied again without limit, and it must not be assumed, without the most careful examination and comparison, that any blocks, found in books having no printer’s name, show them to have been published by a certain printer. ”

“ Where a printer had but a small stock of decorative initial letters he frequently made use of an ornamental frame, in the centre of which he placed an ordinary capital. This practice seems to have arisen about the middle of the sixteenth century, and it probably had its origin on the Continent.
These borders for initials have come to be known as ‘factotums,’ because they were called to do duty on all occasions, and they have been heartily condemned as destructive of all artistic feeling. When, as they often do, they occur throughout a book, they become monotonous. ”

“ No account of Modern Printers’ Ornaments would be complete without a record of the work done by the University Presses. Marching with the times the Oxford University Press, still familiarly known as the Clarendon Press, has long since relegated the once famous Fell and Junius types to the vaults as curiosities, and has availed itself of the best founts that a modern foundry can produce. In 1766 the University had an account with William Caslon, from whom it bought both English and Foreign sorts, and at the present day no firm in England can show better craftsmanship. ”

“ Initial Letters and Factotums
Nothing tends to heighten the artistic beauty of a book so much as the initial letters. This fact was recognized by the monastic scribes, who lavished all their skill in the production of beautifully illuminated letters in the Missals and Books of Hours upon which they spent their time in the scriptorium.
For some time after the introduction of printing, with certain rare exceptions, the early printers left the space to be filled by the initial letter blank for the illuminator to fill in. ”

“ There was so much material in the market, and it saved so much time and trouble to buy from others. Or was it that there was no man in England sufficiently skilled to draw or design initial letters, and no craftsman skilled enough in woodcutting to produce them? Whatever the reason, this foreign trade in initials continued throughout the sixteenth century, as blocks that had come from Paris, Lyons, Basle, Venice, Florence, the Low Countries, and even Spain are frequently met with in books of that time. ”

“ Other small ornaments came into use during the sixteenth century. The national emblems the rose, the thistle, and the harp crowned, each a separate unit, but generally used together; the acorn, the fleur-de-lys, stars and various other forms to which it is difficult to give a name, are found, and towards the close of the century we come upon a border made up of ten printers’ rules set close and printed in red and black, which has a novel if not very [51] artistic appearance. ”

“ But the miscellaneous ornaments I have in mind are usually found on the title-pages of books, and even there they are only occasionally met with in the sixteenth century, when it was usual for the printer to place his own device above the imprint. As these devices were often very artistic, they served their purpose of decoration very well. Vautrollier’s fine series of the Anchora Spei may be cited as an instance.
But there was at least one printer in the sixteenth century who did not follow this custom, and that was Henry Bynneman. ”

“ Judging from the type specimen sheets issued before 1780, the type-founders only supplied the smaller ornaments such as the fleuron, with suggestions as to their effective use. On the other hand, we find William Bowyer at one end of the century having a special tail-piece designed for him commemorative of the great fire that destroyed his premises in 1712, and at the other end Thomas Bewick, the engraver, drawing and cutting suitable head and tail pieces to go with his illustrations.
The nineteenth century opens the era of Modern work, which forms the closing chapters of this book. ”

“ Matters improved as time went on, and English gravers began to turn out some very creditable work, so that, regarded as printers’ ornaments, whether their origin be native or foreign, the initial letters found in English books from the fifteenth to the twentieth century are of sufficient artistic merit, as well as sufficiently numerous, to deserve a book or books to themselves. ”

“ The Whittingham ornaments and old face type are especially suitable to the character of the work.
The influence exercised by the Chiswick Press was continued until there arose on the horizon of the book world one greater than either of the Whittinghams—William Morris. Educated at Marlborough School and Exeter College, Oxford, this gifted man became a weaver of wonderful tales in prose and verse, a painter of pictures and frescoes, a designer of art tapestries, the founder of a [107] decorating firm in which artists such as Rossetti and Burne-Jones were partners. ”

“ For Parker he cut a fount of Saxon types in metal which Mr Talbot Reed, in his Old English Letter Foundries, says was cast with such accuracy and regularity as was highly creditable to his excellence as a founder. So that John Day had a foundry at which he could have cast any small ornaments he required. Some of the blocks found in his books bear the initials I.D., but it has never been satisfactorily established that he cut them; but there is no doubt that he obtained the aid of the best artists and woodcutters available. ”

“ As a specimen of the woodcutters’ art this border is of no great merit; it is a one-piece border, and it has been reproduced scores of times. But as being the earliest border used in Cambridge it calls for mention in this volume, and we give a reproduction of it. In the seventeenth century the Cambridge printers built up some effective borders with small ornaments. An extremely pretty one is seen round the title-page of the Clavis Apocalyptica, printed by Thomas Buck in 1632. In this instance thirty-nine units are used in a space of 110 mm. ”

“ Classical subjects begin to appear in English books about the middle of the sixteenth century, although as early as 1521 Siberch at Cambridge used a letter C, representing St George and the Dragon, white on a black ground, which Mr Sayle thinks is local work.
A very fine outline letter S, measuring 64 by 63 mm., shows two figures appealing to a satyr, with a background of flowers and foliage, was used by T. Berthelet in the Bibliotheca Eliotæ in 1559. This printer also used an artistic alphabet which clearly came from Basle. ”

“ Charles Whittingham the younger was a man of ideas. Liberally educated, he turned his education to good account. He also was a book lover as well as a printer, and consequently there sprang up a life-long connection between [105] the two that resulted in the production of some notable books. Whereas Whittingham the elder had been noted for his printing of pictures, Whittingham the younger made it the peculiar “grace of his craft to bedeck books with borders, comely head-pieces, and other alluring devices. ”

“ During the first forty years woodcut ornaments are found in almost all books, and though woodcut borders to title-pages are sometimes met with, they gave place in the early part of the century to engraved title-pages of very elaborate character. The fleuron, worked up into borders, etc., retained its popularity. The Civil War, while it stimulated the printing of controversial tracts and news-sheets, killed all artistic effort. ”

“ In one the filials consist of a female head at the end of an elongated and curved neck and are both alike, but in the other the upper portions of a male and female are seen. Another feature of these two factotums is some kind of drapery and they were enclosed within single rules. Both of them are found in the hands of many printers in London and of those at Oxford and Cambridge at the same time.
Equally familiar in books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are two larger forms, one of which shows a man and woman plucking thistles and tufts of thistles in the foreground. ”

“ As stated above, each border consisted of four pieces, each different, and no less than eight separate sets of designs were used throughout the book. Their main features were spirals of flowers and foliage, varied by the introduction of birds and grotesque animals, as though the artist had gone to some bestiary, as books on natural history were then called, for inspiration.
In some of the smaller cuts a grotesque human face is seen, such as masons were fond of carving on the misericords of churches and cathedrals. ”

“ When George Purslowe joined the firm he brought with him several ornaments that had belonged to Simon Stafford, and in 1620, when he printed the Rev. Elnathan Parr’s Exposition on the Epistle to the Romans, he used as a head-piece a block which is found in the hands of Henry Bynneman as far back as 1581, and it was a curious medley of part of one of Simon Stafford’s and part of the ‘fleur-de-lys’ block, and shows that the designs of both those blocks had their origin in sixteenth century work.
These Eliots Court head-pieces are very typical of seventeenth century work ”

“ James Grover was another type-founder at work in the second half of the seventeenth century, and he cast the types for the folio editions of Cicero and Herodotus, printed in 1679, for a syndicate of London booksellers. Both these works were amongst the best specimens of typography of that period, but the only ornaments used in the first were initial letters. In the Herodotus there is a tail-piece, to which I shall return when dealing with those ornaments. ”

“ Printers’ ornaments include head and tail pieces, initial letters, borders to title-pages or text, and decorative blocks such as those which were used freely by the sixteenth century printer, Henry Bynneman, and others. Printers’ devices, being in the nature of trade marks, have no place in this volume, as, although decorative in themselves, they were not used simply for the sake of embellishing the page. ”

“ More than half the exhibits were from English presses, and the general impression conveyed by that exhibition was, that a great improvement in craftsmanship had taken place all round in the last five and twenty years. What our printers and type-founders can do at the present day in the way of book [111] decoration will be seen by a study of the following pages, in which, by the kindness of the various firms, we are able to bring together a representative collection of modern Printers’ Ornaments. ”

“ The large number of service books, printed by the various printers on the Continent ever since the first establishment of the art in Europe, had flooded the market with a quantity of such blocks, of which he was not slow to avail himself. As Mr Sayle remarks, the Great Bibles of 1540 and 1541 are a mine in themselves. The magnificent letter I, illustrating the Creation, is sufficiently well known. ”

“ Then with Caslon’s advent as a type-founder native talent began to assert itself; but the alteration went even further than this, and [77] heralded a change in taste on the part of printers, who seem to have been captured by a different school of designers altogether. We suspect that this was largely due to the influence of the Oxford engraver, M. Burghers. Whether the blocks produced during this century were or were not more artistic than those they supplanted must be left to experts to decide. ”

“ English printers were in constant intercourse with Continental printers and booksellers, and had the opportunity of attending the great annual fair at Frankfort, where they could see all the latest productions of the Continental presses and where they could buy anything they wanted in the way of type, ornaments or binding tools. ”