PEN DRAWING BY PENLICK. From La Petit Journal Pour Rire. The legend reads: “Our Soldiers. Machin, the staff officer, the terror of the soldier, doesn’t joke with the rules and regulations; has risen from the rank and file; a very useful individual; it’s always Machin here and Machin there, ask Machin. He terrorizes the one-year volunteers, whom he treats as young shoots (literal translation beets); an old bachelor to the core.”
{222} were put in the case and used promiscuously year after year; and when the letter needed was not at hand, a cut like the last example was employed to adorn the page, as a decoration.
Here we have a design by Holbein with Arabesque or Celtic interlacing, which is often studied by designers, and used with pleasing results.
It is probable that all the early Italian and French leather book-covers were imitations of Arab book-covers (or, at any rate, Eastern covers) brought into Europe by the Moors in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Their Mohammedan religion forbade their picturing the figures of man or beast, and so the efforts of their designers were almost entirely centered on lettering, and on interlacing streamers or bands, or whatever we may call them (since these were also used by Celtic and Byzantian designers they are sometimes called Celtic or Byzantian interlacing); and their book-covers consisted of beautiful inlays of colored leather on ingenious combinations of interlaced lines.
In the next chapter the subject of wood engraving will be taken up, and it will make this chapter more interesting.
LA REVUE. Headpiece from a French periodical.
CHAPTER IX.
SUGGESTIONS FOR PRACTICE IN THE TECHNIC OF WOOD ENGRAVING — PHOTO-ENGRAVING THE MORE PRACTICAL, BUT LACKS THE RICHNESS OF THE WOOD-ENGRAVED LINE — DIRECTIONS FOR PRACTICE IN WOOD ENGRAVING — SIMPLE SUBJECTS AND A SIMPLE TECHNIC ARE ADVISED FOR BEGINNERS — MANY CASES INSTANCED IN WHICH CRUDE OR WORN PLATES AND WOOD TYPE MAY BE IMPROVED BY A LITTLE HAND WORK.