EXAMPLE 539-A
The Lion of St. Mark as a printshop device
EXAMPLE 539-B
The Oswald Press mark designed by T. M. Cleland
In further consideration of the cross-and-globe device it may be well to mention that an astronomical sign consisting of a circle with a cross above it (♁) was used by the Egyptians many years before the Christian era. Such a sign is yet used astronomically and also to indicate the male in botany. Another astronomical sign bearing on the subject is that of a cross within a circle (⨁), by which the earth is indicated.
EXAMPLE 540
Robert Estienne’s mark, and Bruce Rogers’s adaptation of it
EXAMPLE 541
An appropriate mark for a printer to adopt
The cross-and-globe device of the Venetian Society of Printers has proved the most popular of any of the old imprints. When Elbert Hubbard established the Roycroft Shop at East Aurora, N. Y., in 1896, he adopted it as a work-mark, placing an “R” in the lower half of the circle in place of the dot. Fra Elbertus’s interpretation of the device established the circle as “the emblem of the perfect (the complete), and the lines puncturing the circle the attempt to make a perfect article, to do perfect work.”
When the advertising manager of the National Biscuit Company was looking about for a trademark this old device of the Lorraine cross and circle must have appealed to him strongly, and such is the power of advertising that printers may some day be accused of copying the design from this biscuit house.