Horn books were also cut in ivory or bone, often with designs engraved on the back or on the handle. The lettering and devices were originally run in with heelball or some such material. They were also made of boxwood with letters burnt in, or engraved pewter, or gingerbread, and sometimes covered in paper with panel stamp impressions in blind or black ink.
Several of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century horn books were covered with leather and stamped in blind, gold, silver, or, in Dutch examples, Dutch metal, which nearly always turns black, from panel stamps; sometimes the designs were arabesques or flowers, and at other times we find figures of saints or kings—St. George and the Dragon, mermaids, and the like—and several of Charles II. on horseback, the Duke of Cumberland, and other great people.
These same stamps are also often impressed on paper backs as well as on leather.
The late cardboard horn books either leave out the cross at the beginning or replace it by a meaningless X; they also often show additional alphabets with little wood-cut illustrations. At last the horn book form is quite lost, and at last we find folded pieces of cardboard with stamped or marbled backs, retaining only the alphabet to show that they are survivals.
WORKS TO CONSULT.
Blades, W.—Books in Chains. London, 1892.
Davenport, C.—English Embroidered Bookbindings. London, 1899.
Davenport, C.—Book Edges. (Bibliographica.)
Davenport, C.—Little Gidding. (Bibliographica.)