English printers' ornaments

by Henry R. Plomer

Another ornament used as a tail-piece in the sixteenth century may be best described as the ‘lozenge’ ornament. Like the ‘fleuron’ it was apparently a stock pattern, supplied to all printers alike from quite the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is found on the Continent, and also in the offices of Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, Richard Faques, and others.

Robert Redman used seven of them, no doubt part of Pynson’s stock, to form a tail-piece at the end of his Year Book for Michaelmas Term, 11th Henry VI., believed to have been printed about 1540, and with them another of Pynson’s border pieces [B.M. 504, f. 16 (8)]. Another curious example of its use is seen at the end of An Enterlude called Lusty Juventus, printed by John Awdeley, without date, but not earlier than 1560, where no less than twenty-seven half lozenges arranged as an inverted triangle are found beneath his imprint on the last page.

An ornament quite common in the sixteenth century, which on occasion served both as head-and tail-piece, may perhaps be described as a ‘ribbon’ ornament, as in appearance it resembles two pieces of ribbon interlaced into circles and squares, a five-pointed star being placed in the centre of the circles and a flower in the centre of the squares. This is all one piece, and was probably metal and could be cut to any length. In 1579 it is found in a book printed by Vautrollier. During the seventeenth century the small ornaments already noticed as used for borders to title-pages—the star, the rose, the crown, the thistle, the fleur-de-lys and the acorn, cast in various sizes—shared with the fleuron the duty of supplying head and tail pieces, or dividing sections of a book.

In 1662 we come upon another example—an urn with a flower growing in it, used in the Liber precum publicarum, printed in 1662, where at the head of the licence fifteen of them are used at the head of the page and again on the verso of the same page; but, whether purposely or not, in each case units of a different design are introduced.

Some further varieties of these small printers’ ornaments, not easily describable—they may be meant for flowers or urns or anything else—are found in a volume of Parliamentary Declarations, etc., of the time of the revolution. When they happened to be new, or were used by a careful printer, these small ornaments were effective, but when, as too often happened during the period between 1640 and 1660, they were old, badly arranged, and badly inked, they often spoilt the book or document in which they were used. By the time the eighteenth century was reached, the compositor’s box had become crowded with small printers’ ornaments. Like all other printers’ materials at that time, these were the production of type-founders in Holland. But in 1720 William Caslon, an engraver of gun-locks, was introduced to the printers William Bowyer and John Watts, and was by them taken to the foundry of James in Bartholomew Close. Bowyer and Watts also advanced him sums of money to enable him to set up as a type-founder. Caslon’s superiority over all other letter-cutters, English or Dutch, was quickly recognized. The shape and proportion of his Roman letter, combined with its wonderful regularity in height, was such as had not been seen in England since the days of Pynson, while his italic founts were also remarkable for their beauty and regularity.

That it was printed with Caslon’s letter was the best advertisement a book could have in the eighteenth century, and his foundry soon eclipsed all others in this country.[8]

His first specimen sheet was issued in 1734, but it shows only five examples of fleuron ornament and two rows of stars. The first of these examples was not a common pattern, although it may have had a predecessor in the seventeenth century. The other four showed no originality—they had been in use for a couple of centuries—but they were cast clearly. If these were all the flowers which Caslon thought it necessary to show after fourteen years’ experience, the inference is that he was more concerned with the cutting of type-faces than ornaments. In the specimen book of 1764 the flowers fill no less than four pages, and in addition to the fleuron, which is shown in many sizes and some new variations, the type-founder had introduced several new designs, such as minute circles that could be arranged in many decorative ways—an hour-glass and skull and cross-bones, no doubt for use as head or tail pieces in funeral sermons—and had also, in one instance at least, reverted to a fifteenth century ribbon pattern. Many single-line castings were also shown. In the specimen book of 1785 many new designs and their possibilities as head and tail pieces were illustrated by artistic and novel arrangement of the various ornaments, some of which we know were adopted by printers throughout the country. Further specimen books were issued by the firm from time to time.

Some examples of the use of small ornaments in the decoration of books in the eighteenth century in which Caslon’s influence is evident are here shown. The first is seen on sig. B of the Rev. William Gardner’s Sermon, preached at the Assizes at Kingston-upon-Thames on August 4, 1726, and is an extremely effective combination of several units of different design surrounded by what may best be described as a bead border, the beads being arranged in groups—an oval between two round—and each group being separated by a star. [B.M. 226, f. 3 (9).]

The next, which shows several new forms of the treatment of the fleuron as a decorative unit, is also remarkable for the very artistic way in which they are arranged, the whole forming what, to use the language of that day, would probably have been called a ‘very elegant’ head-piece. It is seen at the head of the text of A Sermon preached at Stafford at the Assizes held there on August 22nd, 1756, by the Rev. Joseph Crewe. In neither of the above cases do we know the printer. [B.M. 225, f. 3 (5).]

Finally we may notice one or two from a little book called The Lover’s Manual, published by a country bookseller, S. Silver of Sandwich, but printed in London, possibly at the same press as the preceding, as the ornaments are very similar.