English printers' ornaments

by Henry R. Plomer

Reginald Wolfe also had a very interesting set, illustrating scenes in the life of St Paul, used in an edition of the New Testament, and in his Chrysostum is a Q, the subject of which is the Judgment of Solomon.

In Bullinger’s Sermons, printed by Ralph Newberrie in 1577, is a letter D that I think belongs to this division, and represents the death of the firstborn in Egypt.

Classical subjects begin to appear in English books about the middle of the sixteenth century, although as early as 1521 Siberch at Cambridge used a letter C, representing St George and the Dragon, white on a black ground, which Mr Sayle thinks is local work.

A very fine outline letter S, measuring 64 by 63 mm., shows two figures appealing to a satyr, with a background of flowers and foliage, was used by T. Berthelet in the Bibliotheca Eliotæ in 1559. This printer also used an artistic alphabet which clearly came from Basle. Another S of the same group, but a different subject, is seen in Day’s Cosmographical Glass, one of the finest examples of that printer’s work, in which are many artistic initials signed I. B., I. C., and I. D. The last two are supposed to stand for John Day, but there is little to support the attribution. But the most famous of these signed initials were those attributed to Anton Sylvius: examples of these are found in books printed by Reginald Wolfe, John Day, and others. As Mr Sayle very rightly says, these initials are worth a monograph in themselves.

Grotesques were of many kinds. They were popular on the Continent in the fifteenth century, and an early example of their use in England is the letter A found in Notary’s hands in 1504, which he had obtained from Bocard of Paris. Another early set were those in which the human face formed a part of the design. These are clearly of French ornament, and sets are found in the hands of Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, Faques, and many others. Wynkyn de Worde also obtained a fine alphabet of this kind from Gottfried van Os, a printer of Gouda, the only letter that he used being an H, seen in Catherine of Siena. They continued in use until the middle of the century.

Heraldic and personal initials are a fairly numerous class. One of the finest is a large decorative letter P, bearing the initials of Edward Whitchurch, and used in the Bible of 1539. In another Bible is found an initial showing the arms of the See of Canterbury. These arms are sometimes found with Archbishop Parker’s initials added to them. In the Chaucer of 1542 is a letter A, with the initials of John Reynes. A fine example of an heraldic letter was a letter D showing the arms of the Earl of Leicester, used by John Day in the Cosmographical Glass, printed in 1559. Christopher Barker, in the Prayer Book of 1580, introduced an A and a T bearing his initials, and in many of his books are found other initial letters bearing the crest and arms of his patron, Francis Walsingham.

The group I have called Miscellaneous is so vast that the examples here noted are barely a fraction of them. They range from all sizes, and are chiefly ornamental—that is, their design illustrates no particular subject.

The E used by Siberch in 1521, in the Libellus de Conscribendis, consists of decorative spirals, white on a black ground, and is very effective. The O and S from the same alphabet are equally fine. These letters bear some relation to those used by Pynson at this time. Stipple work and ornament of a different kind are the main features of the fine H used on sig. A 2 of Pynson’s Libello huic regio hæc insunt, printed in the same year.

Still more striking is the V seen in the Year Books of Edward III., printed by Robert Redman in 1540, and which was probably part of Pynson’s material. This may have come from Italy.

Vautrollier, the Huguenot printer in London, had some beautiful initials, amongst them the E here shown, and which figures in many of his books. A contrast to this is the outline letter C from the 1562 edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Decoration of an arabesque kind is seen in a fine set of initials used by Christopher Barker in the Prayer Book of 1580, mentioned above.