English printers' ornaments

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. But before long they began to cut the initials for their books in wood, and they went to the manuscript books for their earliest model, hence the ecclesiastical character of the first woodcut initials; and although they could never hope to obtain the beauty of the illuminated letter, which was due as much to the colouring as the design, the printers soon learnt to produce very striking and effective decorative initials. For an illustration we need go no further than Paris, where in the fifteenth century the books of Antoine Verard were decorated with a grand series of woodcut L’s, copied from the decorative script of that period, while it is only necessary to glance through Mons. A. Claudin’s magnificent history of printing in France to see many other examples; while M. Butsch’s Bücher-Ornamentik and Castellani’s Early Venetian Printing show that the presses of other countries were equally prolific in this field of book decoration.

The early English printers in this, as in every other, branch of their work were content to copy or to borrow from foreign sources rather than to create, consequently the initials found in their books before 1500 show little originality. They borrowed chiefly from France, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that they bought chiefly from France. 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. 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 publication of such a book is long overdue. Too much good material has already been wasted in the piecemeal treatment of the subject and in the needless repetition of the same illustrations. What is needed is a comprehensive study of the whole subject, tracing as far as possible the birthplace of various alphabets, and what is no less interesting, pointing out the variations in certain alphabets due to the copyist.

In the hope that such a work may not be much longer delayed, I think it as well to say as little as possible on this branch of English printers’ ornaments, and in this section merely to whet the appetite of the reader for that full study of the subject that is bound to come.

Fortunately there is no lack of material. The studies of Mr Charles Sayle, of Cambridge University Library, which have extended over several years, supplemented by those of Mr A. W. Pollard, Dr Oscar Jennings, and recently of Mr Percy Smith, make the task a light one as far as the initials of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are concerned. With Mr Sayle’s kind permission two or three examples have been chosen from his paper on the subject read before the Bibliographical Society in November 1902. To these I have added a few others of that period that, so far as is known, have not hitherto been reproduced, and I have further supplemented them with some examples from my recent paper on the Eliots Court Press and other sources to illustrate the work of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

For the purposes of this section I have divided the letters into groups, according to their subjects, such as ecclesiastical, biblical, classical, grotesque, heraldic, and finally miscellaneous, embracing designs not otherwise groupable.

An early example of the ecclesiastical initial is the letter T found on the verso of the title-page of the Legend Aurea. Those seen in the Morton Missal of 1500, some of which embody Cardinal Morton’s rebus, also belong to this class, and have the additional merit of being, it is believed, English workmanship.

The highly decorative L found in some of the books of R. Faques about 1530 is another good example, while the F used in 1540 by William Middleton in the Year Books of Henry VI., showing a bishop with a mitre, is also worth notice.

The Reformation and the printing of Bibles and Common Prayer called for large numbers of initial letters of all sizes, and it is not surprising that Biblical scenes should have formed the subject of many of these. Here again the English printer had no need to create. 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. The H, representing Samuel and Eli, first used by Herford in 1544, is another familiar example.

Reginald Wolfe also had a very interesting set, illustrating scenes in the life of St Paul, used in an edition of the New Testament, and in his Chrysostum is a Q, the subject of which is the Judgment of Solomon.

In Bullinger’s Sermons, printed by Ralph Newberrie in 1577, is a letter D that I think belongs to this division, and represents the death of the firstborn in Egypt.

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. Another S of the same group, but a different subject, is seen in Day’s Cosmographical Glass, one of the finest examples of that printer’s work, in which are many artistic initials signed I. B., I. C., and I. D. The last two are supposed to stand for John Day, but there is little to support the attribution. But the most famous of these signed initials were those attributed to Anton Sylvius: examples of these are found in books printed by Reginald Wolfe, John Day, and others. As Mr Sayle very rightly says, these initials are worth a monograph in themselves.

Grotesques were of many kinds. They were popular on the Continent in the fifteenth century, and an early example of their use in England is the letter A found in Notary’s hands in 1504, which he had obtained from Bocard of Paris. Another early set were those in which the human face formed a part of the design. These are clearly of French ornament, and sets are found in the hands of Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, Faques, and many others. Wynkyn de Worde also obtained a fine alphabet of this kind from Gottfried van Os, a printer of Gouda, the only letter that he used being an H, seen in Catherine of Siena. They continued in use until the middle of the century.

Heraldic and personal initials are a fairly numerous class. One of the finest is a large decorative letter P, bearing the initials of Edward Whitchurch, and used in the Bible of 1539. In another Bible is found an initial showing the arms of the See of Canterbury. These arms are sometimes found with Archbishop Parker’s initials added to them. In the Chaucer of 1542 is a letter A, with the initials of John Reynes. A fine example of an heraldic letter was a letter D showing the arms of the Earl of Leicester, used by John Day in the Cosmographical Glass, printed in 1559. Christopher Barker, in the Prayer Book of 1580, introduced an A and a T bearing his initials, and in many of his books are found other initial letters bearing the crest and arms of his patron, Francis Walsingham.

The group I have called Miscellaneous is so vast that the examples here noted are barely a fraction of them. They range from all sizes, and are chiefly ornamental—that is, their design illustrates no particular subject.

The E used by Siberch in 1521, in the Libellus de Conscribendis, consists of decorative spirals, white on a black ground, and is very effective. The O and S from the same alphabet are equally fine. These letters bear some relation to those used by Pynson at this time. Stipple work and ornament of a different kind are the main features of the fine H used on sig. A 2 of Pynson’s Libello huic regio hæc insunt, printed in the same year.

Still more striking is the V seen in the Year Books of Edward III., printed by Robert Redman in 1540, and which was probably part of Pynson’s material. This may have come from Italy.

Vautrollier, the Huguenot printer in London, had some beautiful initials, amongst them the E here shown, and which figures in many of his books. A contrast to this is the outline letter C from the 1562 edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Decoration of an arabesque kind is seen in a fine set of initials used by Christopher Barker in the Prayer Book of 1580, mentioned above.

Some of the small initials in the sixteenth century are equally as good as the large ones. Hundreds of them call for illustration, but there is only room here to include one of two exquisite little examples that were amongst Denham’s stock, and which he used in The Footepath to Felicitie in 1581. These are two T’s, both the same size but differing in design.

Passing on into the seventeenth century we come at once upon the work of the Eliots Court Press. Many of their large stock of decorative initials came to them through Henry Bynneman, and can be traced back to the presses of Henry Denham, Reginald Wolf, and Richard Jugge. But there was one alphabet that I have called the Apostle series, as each letter showed a figure round whose head was a nimbus, some of which have the emblems of the apostles, but other personages, such as King David, are now and again substituted. These initials were enclosed in a frame each side of which shows a certain number of circles, or they may be intended for studs. This alphabet made its first appearance in books printed at the Eliots Court Press in 1603, when it was used in the folio Plutarch, which bears Arnold Hatfield’s imprint; but both George Robinson and Henry Middleton had previously used a similar alphabet. In fact, there is no doubt that here we see the copyist at work, and it seems probable that the Eliots Court ‘Apostle’ alphabet was a direct copy from that used by Henry Middleton; but there was one feature of the Middleton letters that, fortunately for the bibliographer of modern times, the copyist did not consider it necessary to follow strictly, and that was the number of circles that were to appear in each section of the frame. So when copying the letter F, instead of putting twelve circles at the top and thirteen at the bottom, as shown in the Middleton letter, he only put nine at the top and ten at the bottom, and it is only by noting this difference in the number of circles in the frame that one can tell the difference between the Eliots Court letters and those of Robinson, Middleton, and various other printers of the seventeenth century who used similar alphabets. By the kindness of Professor A. W. Pollard I am enabled to show two of these Apostle letters which appeared in my article; also two other decorative letters that are found in books issuing from that press. Probably the I was designed to commemorate the accession of King James, in honour of the king of that name, as it embodies the rose and thistle crowned.

Mr Sayle, in a footnote to his paper mentioned above, calls attention to the heraldic initials found in Thos. Fuller’s Church History, 1655, each section of which was dedicated to a nobleman, whose arms are shown in the initial of the opening paragraph.

The work of the University presses at this time also provide some good initial letters. M. Burghers of Oxford designed some very fine ones for the Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, and Buck and Daniel at Cambridge used a somewhat ornate but very decorative alphabet, examples of which are reproduced in Bowes’ Catalogue of Cambridge Books. In the Lucretius of 1713, already referred to in the section on head and tail pieces, the initials carry on the unity of design and are in every way suitable. Though small in size they fit in with the type admirably and add to the charm of what was undoubtedly one of the best productions of the eighteenth century press, as may be seen from the two examples here reproduced.

Of another character altogether is the initial A taken from a tract written by the Rev. Elisha Smith in 1719, and the T found in a sermon printed at Edinburgh in 1740.

Factotums

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. On the other hand, these factotums, to give them their modern name, are not without merit, and in the case of large ones they could be made artistic or decorative. They were made both in metal and wood, and certain patterns were apparently turned out by the foundries in large numbers and supplied to all printers alike. Two of the commonest and perhaps the earliest forms were small frames measuring 22 × 21 mm. and were of classic design, in one case the filials rising from two cornucopiæ apparently fastened together with bows and ends of rope (?). In the other instance the cornucopiæ are more floral in treatment. 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. Needless to say this was of Scottish origin, and is first found in the books of Waldegrave when he was printing in Scotland. It afterwards was used by the Eliots Court Press and other printers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The smaller of the two represents the story of Salome.

A series of factotums found in Grover’s printing office in 1679 and used by him in the folio Herodotus are evidently woodcuts and are not without merit. A very similar factotum which may possibly have migrated from Grover’s foundry was in use by the Clarendon Press in 1759.[10] They are evidently by the same hand that cut the tail-piece seen in the same volume.

The use of these borders continued throughout the eighteenth century, and a good example is seen in a sermon printed in 1738, which is partly geometrical and partly floral.

They were frequently made up of fleurons and very cleverly arranged. We reproduce one taken from The Lovers’ Manual, 1753.