English printers' ornaments

The earliest important ornament found in a book printed in England is a woodcut border to a title-page. 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.

Title-pages did not make their appearance on the Continent until 1476, but once adopted their decoration by the means of ornamental borders quickly followed. The early Venetian printers, who were perhaps the finest artists in the world as regards the decoration of books, began by placing a strapwork ornament that went partly along the bottom and partly up the left-hand side of the first page of text, and this they were in the habit of printing with red ink. From this it was an easy transition to borders round title-pages, or round the colophon and device on the last leaf, and the practice quickly spread over the Continent. For Books of Hours and Missals blocks were cut representing scenes from the life of Christ or other Bible subjects, but more decorative and lighter borders were designed for such books as Ariosto or the Decameron of Boccaccio. Splendid examples of such borders are met with in books from the presses of Aldus, Jenson and Ratdolt in Venice, of Pigouchet, Vostre and du Pré in Paris, and in the books of the printers at Lyons, Basle, Cologne and other Continental cities in which printing had been established.

Nor was it long after Caxton’s settlement in Westminster before borders appeared in England, although, as has already been seen, he cared for none of these things. The printer who introduced them was a foreigner, Theodoric Rood of Cologne, who set up a press in Oxford in the latter part of the year 1478. In 1481 he printed an edition of the Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima, made by Alexander of Hales, and this title was surrounded by a woodcut border.

Only some copies of this book have the border, and the Bodleian Library has no copy in which it is found. Mr E. G. Duff, in his English Provincial Printers, etc. (Cambridge, 1912), suggests that its insertion was an afterthought of the printer; but it is a curious circumstance that he used it again in John Lathbury’s Commentary on the Lamentations of Jeremiah, which he printed in 1482, but again only certain copies of the book are found to have it.

Fortunately a leaf of the Jeremiah is in the Bagford collection,[6] and from this I am able to describe it. The border is made up of four blocks, each of a different width. That at the top measures 199 by 34 mm., and it will be seen that the bottom piece is the largest. The design is the same in all four pieces, and consists of spirals of flowers, fruit and foliage amidst which are a number of birds. It makes a handsome border, the drawing and the cutting both being good, but it was probably of foreign origin.

The next border of which we have any trace in an English book was in the hands of William de Machlinia, another foreigner who had settled in London. Between 1483–85 he printed a small Book of Hours according to the Sarum use, of which only a few leaves remain. Seven of these are in the British Museum, and they show that some parts of the work were ornamented with a woodcut border to each page, probably of French origin. The design is somewhat similar but much more simple than that used by Theodoric Rood, consisting of spirals of flowers and foliage only. This border passed into Richard Pynson’s hands when he took over Machlinia’s business. In the last year of his life William Caxton made a notable departure from his usual custom by placing a decorative border, consisting of four pieces, round each page of The Fifteen Oes, a collection of prayers intended to be issued with a Book of Hours.

These blocks have met with unmerited censure in some quarters. They appear to me to be both cleverly designed and to show no little skill on the part of the woodcutter. They were probably French work, as blocks similar to them may be seen in service books printed by Jean du Pré in Paris. 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. In one instance a child is shown holding the spray, and the pose of the figure is quite good. Another of the blocks shows a winged figure kneeling on one knee and holding a huntsman’s horn with both hands, and here again the attitude is not without grace. Again, take the drawing of the passion flower in the same block, which shows feeling as well as a desire for truth on the part of the artist. Moreover, he was a born humorist, as witness the block showing the gryphon and the bird, which reminds one of passages in Alice Through the Looking Glass.

It was the printer’s workman—for I decline to believe that Caxton set up these pages—not the artist who was at fault, and who was responsible for their clumsy and slovenly appearance. No attempt was made to space them out in order to make them meet, and not a few were put in upside down. Had the printer shown as much skill as the artist there would be little to find fault with. This border passed into the possession of De Worde, who used it as a whole, or parts of it, in several books.

The next fifteenth century border found in English printed books occurs in an edition of the Horæ ad usum Sarum, printed in 1497 by Julian Notary, Jean Barbier, and an unidentified printer whose initials were I. H., and who is supposed to have been Jean Huvin of Rouen. These three printers had set up in London the previous year, and the Horæ in question was commissioned by Wynkyn de Worde. All that remains of this book is a fragment of four leaves preserved in the Bodleian Library, but they show that each page was surrounded by a border of printed ornaments. These were part of a stock of some twenty or five and twenty blocks which the printers would appear to have obtained from France, nearly all of them being afterwards used in two remarkable borders found in books printed by Notary early in the next century, and a description is therefore postponed until I come to that period.

To the printer Richard Pynson belongs the credit of producing the most sumptuously decorated book that appeared in England in the fifteenth century. Pynson’s excellent work as a printer had brought him to the notice of many learned men, and amongst his patrons was Cardinal John Morton. Morton was an Oxford man, and filled many high offices before he became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1486. He was a lover of books, and in 1500 he commissioned Pynson to print a Missal that should equal in beauty of letterpress and decoration anything of that kind that had been produced on the Continent. We cannot doubt that he financed Pynson during the preparation of this work, and we may go even further and say that the decorative work seen in it is largely English. By the kindness of Dr Cowley, librarian of the Bodleian, and with the help of the Oxford University Press, a page from this splendid specimen of Pynson’s craftsmanship forms the frontispiece to the present volume. The Missal was a small folio, printed in a bold, handsome type of black letter in double columns. Each page was surrounded by a border which, as will be seen from the illustration, consisted of four pieces. In some respects this border resembles that of Theodoric Rood, to which indeed Pynson may have gone for his model. On the other hand, the work is somewhat reminiscent of certain French service books.

The bottom panel, with its rebus of Morton, was probably of native work. Not only are the spirals differently treated to those in the side panels, but the flowers and fruit are also of a different character. The page is, in fact, as nearly perfect as the skill of the printers and woodcutter could make it.

During the first eighteen years of the sixteenth century some interesting borders are met with in books printed in England.

In the year 1503 Wynkyn de Worde printed an edition of Æsop’s Fables in quarto, and he surrounded the title with a made-up border that is typical of the slovenly way in which he often did his work. The outer border consists of two pieces, evidently parts of what had at one time been one block, of which the left-hand portion retained its original form, but the other half had at some time been damaged, and a part of the lower corner had gone altogether, giving the whole an uneven appearance. Further, in order to fill up the space between the illustration at the top and outer border, two smaller pieces, but of different sizes and design, were inserted. The general design in these blocks is spirals of flowers and foliage, the flowers being apparently pinks, or carnations, and daisies.

The printer used this border in exactly this same state on the title-page of Nychodemus Gospell, which he printed in 1511; but in the edition of 1518 of that work the border had undergone a strange transformation. The whole of the top and the right-hand portion had gone, the top being occupied with a heavy block upon which the title was cut in white letters on a black ground, while the right-hand side was filled up with (1) A block from the Fifteen Oes; (2) Four lozenges; (3) Two pieces of ‘ribbon’ ornament; (4) One piece of twisted ornament; (5) A fleuron.

The printer’s device, which in the earlier edition is seen below the cut of the Crucifixion, is also absent from this, its place being filled by another cut of the Crucifixion, evidently from a Missal or Book of Hours; but the printer either forgot (or did not trouble himself about the matter) that the device in the earlier edition was set horizontally, whereas the block of the Crucifixion, which he chose to replace it, had to be set upright, and although it was to all practical purposes the same size, placing it upright left a vacant space under the inner top block and a space all round, which he filled with odds and ends of small ornaments, including two lozenges and two six-petalled flowers.

In the same year, 1503, Julian Notary printed the first of the two books alluded to above, a folio edition of the Legenda Aurea. On the last leaf he placed his device, and made a border for it with no less than eighteen of the decorative blocks that he had obtained from France. In the following year he printed an edition of St Albans Chronicle, again in folio.

This work had no title-page, but in the place of one Notary arranged, on the recto of the first leaf, five of the cuts used in the text, and, to heighten their appearance and make the page more effective, he put round them a border of fifteen of these same decorative blocks. Altogether some two and twenty separate designs are seen in these two collections, and as, after Notary’s retirement from business or death, they appear frequently in the books of other printers during the sixteenth century, it may be helpful if I tabulate them.

In this list the letters L. and C. stand for Legenda and Chronicle; the depth measurements are taken from the centre and not the ends of the blocks. All of them are criblé, and each is enclosed within rules.

In another edition of this Chronicle, printed at a later date, either by Richard Pynson or Wynkyn de Worde, the printer, following the plan of Julian Notary, placed five blocks on the front page and surrounded them with a border. The largest block measures 118 by 99 mm., and represents a king on horseback riding through an archway. This is a variant of the block seen in the Polychronicon. At the top are two smaller blocks, one representing St George and the Dragon and the other the royal arms crowned with angels as supporters. Down the outer side of the large cut are two other blocks, the upper one possibly an odd cut from a Book of Hours, measuring only 40 by 25 mm., representing a priest at the bedside of a sick man; and the lower one the soldier with the pike which De Worde had used in the play of Hickscorner. The border was made up by the repetition of five small ornaments—(1) The ribbon; (2) The cable; (3) A variant of the fleuron; (4) A flower or star; (5) A Maltese cross. Altogether 126 separate units went to make up this very singular border.

In 1504 William Faques printed the Statutes of the 19th Henry VII. in folio, and placed round each page a neat but not very striking chain border, and in 1508 Pynson printed a quarto edition of Petrus Carmelianus with a title in a border, built up with a series of small ornaments somewhat resembling two narrow strips of ribbon plaited at the ends, with a fleuron introduced here and there. As similar ornaments are found in books printed at Rouen, it is very likely that Pynson obtained them from thence, but they appear to have been a stock pattern, as Wynkyn de Worde had an identical set.

A curious set of border pieces was used by Pynson in 1509 in his edition of Sebastian Brant’s Shyp of Folys. Each illustration throughout the book had a border piece on either side. The first two are seen on sig. b 5, and are not unlike those used by Caxton in the Fifteen Oes. They were not long enough to reach the bottom of the cut, so the printer filled the intervening space with a lozenge-shaped ornament. Throughout the remainder of the book he rang the changes on four blocks. Two of these measured 112 by 14 mm., and the design of one was a naked figure in the midst of flowers and foliage, with a bird at the top and some fabulous animal at the bottom; the second showed spirals of flowers and foliage with three birds. The other two blocks measured 112 by 12 mm. and were both alike, their design being a series of half fleur-de-lys alternating with halves of some other pattern and divided from each other by double white lines. All these blocks were criblé and within double rules.

Another good example of a built-up border is seen in a volume of Year Books of the reign of Edward III., printed by Pynson in 1518. Preceding the title-page is his large device (McKerrow, 44) surrounded by a border of various ornaments. At the top is a block measuring 118 by 9 mm., much the same in design as the one just mentioned above. At the bottom two much smaller blocks are placed side by side. In one the principal features are a dragon and a monkey; in the other a man and woman, the man impaling a bird that is seated in the centre between two sprays of flowers. These look French in style, both are criblé, and they bear a close resemblance to those in use by Notary. On the left-hand side of the device are two narrow blocks, each measuring 65 by 11 mm. The upper one has a spiral of fruit and leaves, and the lower a human figure holding a leaf. As these two blocks did not fill up the space required to be filled, two pieces of the ribbon ornament were placed between and below them. On the opposite side are two more blocks, both very narrow, and they have printed badly. There is nothing striking in their design.

Another of Pynson’s borders is seen in the edition of Sallust printed in 1520.

In 1523 Richard Faques printed Skelton’s Goodly Garland in quarto. On the title-page is a cut of a student at his desk, and this has on three sides a border of printers’ ornaments. The outer border was made up of what are probably variations of the fleuron, each unit being about 13 mm. in length. The inner border of the two sides is made up of a series of units which, I think, is intended to represent the heraldic tincture ‘Ermine.’ They were evidently a reproduction on a very small scale of the half ornament that alternates with the half fleur-de-lys, in one of the blocks used in Pynson’s Shyp of Folys.

Again, on the last leaf of this book is Faques’ device surrounded by a border built up with whole or portions of the lozenge ornament arranged within borders of the fleuron unit seen on the front page. These lozenge ornaments are slightly smaller than those in Pynson’s hands.

Altogether this is a rather effective border. Another example of a ‘mixed border,’ to use a gardening term, is found in the Greate Herball, printed by Peter Treveris in 1526. Two of these blocks, the side pieces, certainly belonged to Wynkyn de Worde, who had used them in 1519 on the front page of the Orcharde of Syon.

As it is manifestly impossible to describe in detail all the border pieces in use in the sixteenth century, I must confine myself to a rapid survey of the remaining seventy years. For the reason already given, I pass over the elaborate one-piece borders used in the various editions of the Bible and Common Prayer Book, and also all those elaborate architectural borders seen in folio books, which began to make their appearance about 1540. These last generally contain in their design the initials, monograms or device of the printers, whether as a mark of ownership or simply as advertisement is not clear; and the most important of them have been reproduced by Mr McKerrow in his valuable book on English Printers’ Devices. But attention must be drawn to the delightful window frame borders found on the title-pages of some of the smaller books printed by Thomas Berthelet, particularly to that seen in the edition of the Modus Tenendi, printed in 1537, and that in Lyttleton’s Tenures in 1545.

Some very interesting borders are also found in the books printed by John Oswen, both at Norwich and Worcester, between the years 1548 and 1551. While not altogether endorsing Mr Duff’s opinion that they were “very much superior to the material used by most of the contemporary printers,”[7] they were certainly unlike anything found in other books, and were probably of foreign origin, though it would be rash to speculate as to what part of the Continent they come from.

I take as an example the title-page of Certayne Sermons appointed by the Kinges Majestie ... printed by him at Worcester in 1549. In this no less than seven distinct pieces are used—one at the top, two at the bottom, and two more on each side. The groundwork of all these is alternately black and white, sometimes arranged in bands, sometimes in triangular form, and there are the usual collection of birds, flowers and human beings.

About the year 1570 English printers began to use the ‘fleuron’ as a material for borders. What has been termed ‘lace’ borders were nothing less than a number of fleurons built up together in the shape of a frame, but the variations in them are infinite. Sometimes they were used singly, sometimes in two rows, but the most effective consisted in a combination of four or eight units repeated over and over again to form a frame, sometimes left with rough edges, sometimes enclosed within rules or other printers’ ornaments. Some of the most delicate and beautiful of these lace borders are to be seen on the title-pages of books printed by Henry Bynneman, Thomas Creede, Henry Denham and Thomas East, although they were adopted by all the English printers of the second half of the sixteenth century, and have continued in popularity to the present day.

This review of the borders found in sixteenth century books may fittingly close with a notice of some used by Henry Denham. In the years 1581–82 he printed for Abraham Fleming two little duodecimos, one called the Footepath to Felicitie, and the other A Monomachie of Motives in the Mind of Man. Both these were devotional works that could be slipped into the pocket, and in each the pages were surrounded by a four-piece border of exquisite design. In the Footepath all the borders were the same, and they may best be described as a chain border, a square alternating with an oval and linked together by a ring, the top and bottom pieces being finished off with a star at either end. In the other book the design is made up of the rose, fleur-de-lys, and portcullis linked together with a delicate flower.

All these borders passed into the hands of Peter Short, Denham’s successor, and afterwards into those of Humfrey Lownes. They thus form an interesting link between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as in 1602 another of Fleming’s books, The Diamond of Devotion, was printed by Peter Short, and each page of this, like its predecessor, had a border, and these show variations from those used before: (1) a border of flowers in an interlaced design, seen on sig. M 2 and elsewhere throughout the book, and (2) a design with the letters E. R., i.e. Elizabeth Regina, with a fleur-de-lys at either end.

In other respects the seventeenth century has little to show in the way of borders, and what it has are neither original nor striking. The engraved title-page came into fashion, but as these belong rather to a History of Engraving than a book on Printers’ Ornaments, they are not dealt with in the present volume. What woodcut borders are met with had done duty in the preceding century, and were generally the worse for wear. But there are one or two uncommon ones to which I should like to draw attention. Amongst the Bagford fragments in the British Museum (Harl. 5927, 155) is a title-page to the second part of Thomas Scot’s Philomythie, or Philomythologie, with the imprint, “Printed at London for Francis Constable, 1616.” This title is surrounded with a light and graceful geometrical border. None of the editions of 1616 in the British Museum appear to have this second part of Philomythie.

In 1641 a curious border resembling a twisted skein of wool, printed white on a black ground, is seen on the title-page of the Rev. T. Denison’s sermon, The White Wolf.

The fleuron borders still continued to be popular, but no such effective use was made of them as in the days of Bynneman and East.

An interesting example of the combination of the two classes of ornament—i.e. the fleuron and the decorative block—is found in the early part of this century. In 1613 the printer John Beale, whose material and work were notoriously bad, printed the second edition of William Martyn’s Youth’s Instructor, and he made up a border to the title-page in the following manner: At the top he built up a gable end of various units of fleuron, enclosed between printers’ rules. Below this he placed a decorative head-piece, the double A, with two naked children. On either side of the title he built up a column of fleurons and other ornaments, and at the bottom he placed another decorative block in which the prominent features are two winged figures blowing horns, and two birds, evidently intended for peacocks, are perched on the filials at the bottom. The whole is a curious medley, and I know of no other like it. Both the decorative blocks used in this border, or copies of them, are found in the hands of other printers at this 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 artistic appearance. The use of rules, not only on the title-page, but on every page of a book, dates back to the sixteenth century, and was probably a relic of the days when all manuscripts were rubricated, and it was adopted by the sixteenth century printers as an adornment for all manner of service books, particularly Bibles.

In the eighteenth century borders of any kind are rare, but two are here reproduced: that to Dodsley’s edition of Gray’s Elegy, printed in 1751, and the border used by John Wilson of Kilmarnock, when printing the first edition of Burns’s Poems in 1786.

Although, as we have seen, it was at Oxford that the earliest use of a border in English books is found, the University printers of that city in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were content to follow in the footsteps of the London men, and until we come to the work of M. Burghers, late in the seventeenth century, there is nothing that calls for special notice.

Burghers’ engraved title-pages do not come within the scope of this work, for reasons already stated.

Cambridge has a somewhat better record: Siberch, the first printer there, had a woodcut border which is found in most of his early books. It is either German or Dutch in character. Its design is architectural, showing an arch supported by curiously decorated columns, with children, one of whom has wings, playing round them. Two other winged figures are seen on the arch, and two more in the bottom compartment, are acting as supporters to the Royal Arms. As Siberch’s sign was the Arma Regia, this bottom block is said to represent it. 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. and placed within rules, giving the whole a neat and pleasing appearance. In 1633 Roger Daniel printed an octavo edition of Dionysius, and used as a border to the title-page a flower perhaps meant for a rose, with stalk and leaves, measuring only 4 × 2 mm., and he placed the units in a double row.

In another case the ornament looks like a fleur-de-lys rising from a slender stem with a leaf on either side. The unit measures 5 × 4 mm., and a double row is made with them.