John Baskerville, who shared with Caslon the merit of being one of the best type-founders of the eighteenth century, made a very sparing use of ornaments; but such as he did use we may suppose him to have cast in his own foundry. Messrs Straus & Dent in their life of this eminent printer have reproduced fourteen of his ornaments. Nos. 14 and 4 differ only as regards size. This flower ornament with circle in the centre was a departure from the old model. Indeed, all these ornaments are light, graceful, and in keeping with the character of the fine types of which he was the founder. Nos. 6 and 7, reproduced by Messrs Straus & Dent, are very beautiful variations of the old-fashioned fleuron, the nearest approach to which are the feathery examples, Nos. 2 and 8, which, however, lack both the firmness and the grace seen in those of the sixteenth century. The ribbon ornament, No. 5, seems to be a survival, or perhaps revival would be the better word, of the ornament found in the hands of Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde.
Altogether the printers of the eighteenth century could obtain a wealth of small ornaments such as they had never possessed before.
HEAD AND TAIL PIECES—DECORATIVE BLOCKS
Chapter V
Head and Tail Pieces—Decorative Blocks
In the foregoing chapter I have dealt with head and tail pieces, more or less built up of small single printers’ ornaments. These did all very well until the advent of something better; but the English printer had to wait until between 1570 and 1580 before what may be termed legitimate head and tail pieces—that is, blocks of a decorative or pictorial design, especially cut for the purpose—were put in his hands. These ran to all sizes, from blocks measuring 139 by 34 mm. for head-pieces in folio books to others measuring only 47 by 12 mm., these last being used independently as head-or tail-pieces, or as ornaments for the title-page. The larger ones are rarely found used elsewhere than in their rightful places.
Before their advent, any odd blocks that had done duty in books of hours or primers on the Continent, and had been bought by some English printer on his annual visit to the Frankfort Fair, were pressed into service as head and tail pieces.
One of the earliest examples of the use of an odd block as a tail-piece is found in Middleton’s edition of the Statutes of the 7th Henry 6th, printed between 1530 and 1540, at the end of Michaelmas term (sig. K 2), where a geometrical and architectural block, measuring 119 by 19 mm., is very effective. This had previously belonged to Wynkyn de Worde.
Another may be seen at the end of A Newe Booke—An Exhortation to the Sicke, printed by John Oswen at Ipswich in 1548, where above and below the imprint are the two blocks here reproduced. They were clearly not specially cut for the purpose—indeed, I have a shrewd suspicion that I have seen the lower one in books printed by Robert Wyer. Nor can we accept the two blocks placed above and below the colophon to the Sarum Missal, printed by Kingston & Sutton in 1555, as genuine head and tail ornaments. They obviously belong rather to the class of border-pieces from some foreign book of hours.
An example of the miscellaneous tail-pieces to be found in sixteenth century books was brought to my notice recently by Miss Murphy. It turned up unexpectedly in the second edition of Harman’s Caveat or Warneing for Common Cursetors, vulgarly called Vagabones, printed by William Griffith in 1567, and it would, I think, be difficult to match it.
The centre is a cut of the Virgin and Child forming the centre of a rose. Outside this is a circle of beads, and outside that again a circle of flowers on a single stem with five roses placed at equal distances round the circle. The whole measures 95 mm. in diameter. It may be one block, and the association of the rosary, the beads and the picture of the Virgin seems to point to its having been cut for some Roman Catholic book. At the end of the Preface is a good tail-piece of arabesque design.