The printer’s device, which in the earlier edition is seen below the cut of the Crucifixion, is also absent from this, its place being filled by another cut of the Crucifixion, evidently from a Missal or Book of Hours; but the printer either forgot (or did not trouble himself about the matter) that the device in the earlier edition was set horizontally, whereas the block of the Crucifixion, which he chose to replace it, had to be set upright, and although it was to all practical purposes the same size, placing it upright left a vacant space under the inner top block and a space all round, which he filled with odds and ends of small ornaments, including two lozenges and two six-petalled flowers.
In the same year, 1503, Julian Notary printed the first of the two books alluded to above, a folio edition of the Legenda Aurea. On the last leaf he placed his device, and made a border for it with no less than eighteen of the decorative blocks that he had obtained from France. In the following year he printed an edition of St Albans Chronicle, again in folio.
This work had no title-page, but in the place of one Notary arranged, on the recto of the first leaf, five of the cuts used in the text, and, to heighten their appearance and make the page more effective, he put round them a border of fifteen of these same decorative blocks. Altogether some two and twenty separate designs are seen in these two collections, and as, after Notary’s retirement from business or death, they appear frequently in the books of other printers during the sixteenth century, it may be helpful if I tabulate them.
In this list the letters L. and C. stand for Legenda and Chronicle; the depth measurements are taken from the centre and not the ends of the blocks. All of them are criblé, and each is enclosed within rules.
1. Sprays of flowers and fruit, birds and a butterfly. 120 by 12 mm. L. and C.
2. Three monkeys and trees. 120 by 10 mm. L. and C.
3. Spirals of flowers and leaves; two birds. 120 by 11 mm. L. and C.
4. Spirals of leaves and stems; various animals; in centre a man blowing horn. 120 by 11 mm. L.
5. Spirals of foliage, birds, and various animals. 120 by 10 mm. L. and C.
6. Leaves only. 120 by 5 mm. L. and C.