This part of our subject is almost wholly unexplored. In dealing with borders we not only had the large collections of title-pages made by Bagford and Ames to draw upon for illustration, but also the studies of such able writers as Mr E. G. Duff and Mr A. W. Pollard. When we come to deal with initial letters we shall also find the writings of Mr C. Sayle and Mr Pollard and others of great value to us; but in dealing with the ornaments known as head-pieces and tail-pieces we have no guidance. No collections of them are known, and no bibliographer has ever made them a special subject of study.
Under these circumstances it will be best to deal with these two classes of printers’ ornaments together, because although there were special blocks designed and cut as head-pieces and tail-pieces which were never used except in their rightful places, on the other hand the early English printers frequently used the same block without distinction.
As their name implies, the object of these blocks or ornaments was to fill blank spaces at the beginning and end of divisions in the text, such as Dedicatory Epistles, Prefaces, Sections of a work, or Chapters. They were also frequently placed above and below a colophon.
Whatever may have been the custom amongst Continental printers with regard to the use of such ornaments, the sixteenth century was well advanced before they began to make their appearance in English books.
So far as I know, no book of Caxton’s exhibits any ornament of this kind. He followed the habit of the scribes and began his letterpress high up the page and did not leave a space that required filling up, and was content to leave other spaces unfilled. Both Wynkyn de Worde and Pynson had a varied assortment of blocks, which, as we have seen, they used as borders to title-pages or to their devices, but neither of them during the fifteenth century placed any ornaments at the head of the text or at the end of any of their books, and even as late as 1525 Pynson’s folio edition of Froissart was entirely devoid of head-or tail-pieces, and so was the folio Bible of 1539.
This at least we may say, with confidence, that the use of some kind of ornament at the bottom of a chapter, or the end of a book, preceded the use of head ornaments, and we may go even further and say that the earliest form of tail-piece used by any English printer was a single fleuron of especially large size, and perhaps cut in wood and not metal, three of which arranged as a reversed triangle is frequently seen in books at an early date in the sixteenth century. We may date the adaptation of the fleuron for the decoration of blank spaces as between 1560 and 1570, and an exceedingly good specimen of its adaptability for this purpose is here reproduced. Bound up with a copy of the Book of Common Prayer, printed by Richard Jugge in 1573, is, A Treatise made by Athanasius ... in what manner ye may use the Psalmes. This consisted of four leaves only, the first of which is missing, signed A [1]—A iiij, and on the verso of A iiij is this elaborate tail-piece. The centre, as will be seen, is formed of a fleuron ornament surrounded by a ‘lace border’ of other fleurons, and flanked at each of the four corners by two pieces of the same ornament. Below this again is a block of a semi-architectural character, with a human head in the middle and a lion’s head at either end, with bunches of fruit in between—the whole design measuring 135 × 122 mm. The ornament in the centre of this tail-piece is a single block and not formed of separate units like the frame; but it is none the less the fleuron worked into an arabesque design. These blocks had been in use some years and became very popular, and a few more that have been met with may be mentioned. Three found in Sophocles’ Antigone, printed in 1581, illustrate the manifold ways in which the fleuron could be treated. The first is triangular in form, while the other two are square but set cornerwise. John Day used several in the Cosmographical Glasse, 1559. Another fine example is to be seen on the title-page of John Bodenham’s Garden of the Muses, printed in 1610 by E. A.—that is, Edward Allde—for John Tap. Both in shape and design this differs altogether from the others. In this instance it becomes an ornament, but it was no doubt used elsewhere as a tail-piece.
Equally when built up to form head and tail pieces the individual fleuron was worked into bewildering variations: to attempt to mention or illustrate them all would be impossible; but an example or two from the sixteenth century books are illustrated. The first is a single row of a single unit, set as a pair back to back. It is taken from sig. F 6 of Vautrollier’s De Rep. Anglorum of 1579. It will be noticed that the original form of the fleuron—the single leaf and stalk—has undergone considerable variation, particularly by the introduction of a heavy cross-piece, perhaps intended as a development of the second piece of stalk, which was a feature of the early unit, but introduced with a purpose, as this example shows. The second and third of our illustrations are taken from the title-page of the first edition of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, printed in London in 1598, and from Waldegrave’s edition of the Basilicon Doron, printed in Edinburgh in 1599. The contrast between the two is worth noting. The units in the Shakespeare measure 9 × 6 mm. each; portions of the stem are shaded, and they are arranged in sets of four and two. Waldegrave’s fleurons were a shade larger, i.e. 9 × 7 mm. The arrangement is the same, but the stem, being entirely black, imparts a totally different appearance to the ornament. In another instance in this book the same units are used, but in this case they are placed horizontally, thus giving a complete alteration in appearance.
A fourth example is built up of two units only—arranged as seven central groups of four, with a border top and bottom consisting of seven pairs; and by leaving out the bottom row yet another change was wrought. Indeed, the possible combinations were endless. No wonder that the fleuron ornament has kept its place in the compositor’s box until the present day.
Another ornament used as a tail-piece in the sixteenth century may be best described as the ‘lozenge’ ornament. Like the ‘fleuron’ it was apparently a stock pattern, supplied to all printers alike from quite the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is found on the Continent, and also in the offices of Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, Richard Faques, and others.
Robert Redman used seven of them, no doubt part of Pynson’s stock, to form a tail-piece at the end of his Year Book for Michaelmas Term, 11th Henry VI., believed to have been printed about 1540, and with them another of Pynson’s border pieces [B.M. 504, f. 16 (8)]. Another curious example of its use is seen at the end of An Enterlude called Lusty Juventus, printed by John Awdeley, without date, but not earlier than 1560, where no less than twenty-seven half lozenges arranged as an inverted triangle are found beneath his imprint on the last page.
An ornament quite common in the sixteenth century, which on occasion served both as head-and tail-piece, may perhaps be described as a ‘ribbon’ ornament, as in appearance it resembles two pieces of ribbon interlaced into circles and squares, a five-pointed star being placed in the centre of the circles and a flower in the centre of the squares. This is all one piece, and was probably metal and could be cut to any length. In 1579 it is found in a book printed by Vautrollier. During the seventeenth century the small ornaments already noticed as used for borders to title-pages—the star, the rose, the crown, the thistle, the fleur-de-lys and the acorn, cast in various sizes—shared with the fleuron the duty of supplying head and tail pieces, or dividing sections of a book.
In 1662 we come upon another example—an urn with a flower growing in it, used in the Liber precum publicarum, printed in 1662, where at the head of the licence fifteen of them are used at the head of the page and again on the verso of the same page; but, whether purposely or not, in each case units of a different design are introduced.
Some further varieties of these small printers’ ornaments, not easily describable—they may be meant for flowers or urns or anything else—are found in a volume of Parliamentary Declarations, etc., of the time of the revolution. When they happened to be new, or were used by a careful printer, these small ornaments were effective, but when, as too often happened during the period between 1640 and 1660, they were old, badly arranged, and badly inked, they often spoilt the book or document in which they were used. By the time the eighteenth century was reached, the compositor’s box had become crowded with small printers’ ornaments. Like all other printers’ materials at that time, these were the production of type-founders in Holland. But in 1720 William Caslon, an engraver of gun-locks, was introduced to the printers William Bowyer and John Watts, and was by them taken to the foundry of James in Bartholomew Close. Bowyer and Watts also advanced him sums of money to enable him to set up as a type-founder. Caslon’s superiority over all other letter-cutters, English or Dutch, was quickly recognized. The shape and proportion of his Roman letter, combined with its wonderful regularity in height, was such as had not been seen in England since the days of Pynson, while his italic founts were also remarkable for their beauty and regularity.
That it was printed with Caslon’s letter was the best advertisement a book could have in the eighteenth century, and his foundry soon eclipsed all others in this country.[8]
His first specimen sheet was issued in 1734, but it shows only five examples of fleuron ornament and two rows of stars. The first of these examples was not a common pattern, although it may have had a predecessor in the seventeenth century. The other four showed no originality—they had been in use for a couple of centuries—but they were cast clearly. If these were all the flowers which Caslon thought it necessary to show after fourteen years’ experience, the inference is that he was more concerned with the cutting of type-faces than ornaments. In the specimen book of 1764 the flowers fill no less than four pages, and in addition to the fleuron, which is shown in many sizes and some new variations, the type-founder had introduced several new designs, such as minute circles that could be arranged in many decorative ways—an hour-glass and skull and cross-bones, no doubt for use as head or tail pieces in funeral sermons—and had also, in one instance at least, reverted to a fifteenth century ribbon pattern. Many single-line castings were also shown. In the specimen book of 1785 many new designs and their possibilities as head and tail pieces were illustrated by artistic and novel arrangement of the various ornaments, some of which we know were adopted by printers throughout the country. Further specimen books were issued by the firm from time to time.
Some examples of the use of small ornaments in the decoration of books in the eighteenth century in which Caslon’s influence is evident are here shown. The first is seen on sig. B of the Rev. William Gardner’s Sermon, preached at the Assizes at Kingston-upon-Thames on August 4, 1726, and is an extremely effective combination of several units of different design surrounded by what may best be described as a bead border, the beads being arranged in groups—an oval between two round—and each group being separated by a star. [B.M. 226, f. 3 (9).]
The next, which shows several new forms of the treatment of the fleuron as a decorative unit, is also remarkable for the very artistic way in which they are arranged, the whole forming what, to use the language of that day, would probably have been called a ‘very elegant’ head-piece. It is seen at the head of the text of A Sermon preached at Stafford at the Assizes held there on August 22nd, 1756, by the Rev. Joseph Crewe. In neither of the above cases do we know the printer. [B.M. 225, f. 3 (5).]
Finally we may notice one or two from a little book called The Lover’s Manual, published by a country bookseller, S. Silver of Sandwich, but printed in London, possibly at the same press as the preceding, as the ornaments are very similar.
John Baskerville, who shared with Caslon the merit of being one of the best type-founders of the eighteenth century, made a very sparing use of ornaments; but such as he did use we may suppose him to have cast in his own foundry. Messrs Straus & Dent in their life of this eminent printer have reproduced fourteen of his ornaments. Nos. 14 and 4 differ only as regards size. This flower ornament with circle in the centre was a departure from the old model. Indeed, all these ornaments are light, graceful, and in keeping with the character of the fine types of which he was the founder. Nos. 6 and 7, reproduced by Messrs Straus & Dent, are very beautiful variations of the old-fashioned fleuron, the nearest approach to which are the feathery examples, Nos. 2 and 8, which, however, lack both the firmness and the grace seen in those of the sixteenth century. The ribbon ornament, No. 5, seems to be a survival, or perhaps revival would be the better word, of the ornament found in the hands of Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde.
Altogether the printers of the eighteenth century could obtain a wealth of small ornaments such as they had never possessed before.