Hours of Anne of Brittany.
PRINTED IN COLOURS BY C. WHITING, LONDON.
Just Published.
ORNAMENTAL ALPHABETS, ANCIENT and MEDIÆVAL, from the Eighth Century, with Numerals, including Gothic, Church-Text, large and small; German, Italian, Arabesque, Initials for Illumination, &c., for the Use of Missal Painters, Illuminators, &c., &c. Drawn and Engraved by F. Delamotte. Royal 8vo, oblong, cloth, post free, 4s.
“A charming little volume this is—evidently a labour of love with the artist, otherwise we should not have seen combined in its production research the most painstaking, with industry the most indefatigable. It is a book that old Lord Monboddo would have hung over, as he turned the leaves, delighted. It is designed, the title-page tells us, for carvers, masons, engravers, decorative painters, lithographers, architectural and decorative draughtsmen, and others; or, as they say in that little dry chip of Latin, almost part and parcel of our vernacular, cum cæteris paribus. Beyond these, however, it will hardly fail to interest the linguist, the philologist, or the grammarian. The work is, in simple truth, a curiosity. An examination of it would not have been disdained by scholars old or new, from Scaliger to Ruddiman, from Tooke to Trench, from Crichton to Mezzofanti. Yet the work is simply, as its title tells us, a book of ornamental alphabets—alphabets ancient and mediæval, from the eighth century, with numerals, Roman and Arabic. Among the letters are Gothic, Church-Text, German, Italian, Arabesque, Ornamental, and besides all these, Initials for Illumination. There are fifty pages, or rather plates, in all—each brilliantly emblazoned. The book is complete. It is the successful realization of a very happy thought, but one thus perfectly realized, through how much toil and assiduous investigation! We can very heartily commend it to the attention of those for whom it has been especially intended by its ingenious collector and designer, Mr. F. Delamotte.”—Sun. London: E. & F. N. SPON, 16, Bucklersbury.