English printers' ornaments

by Henry R. Plomer

ENGLISH PRINTERS AND THEIR ORNAMENTS

Chapter II
English Printers and their Ornaments

In the five and twenty years that elapsed from the discovery of the art of printing in Mentz, to Caxton’s establishment of his press in Westminster, the printers on the Continent had by these means brought the decoration of the printed book to an astonishing degree of excellence. They could never hope to attain the results produced by the monastic rubricator or colourist, but they learnt to equal them in beauty of design and delicacy of treatment. For, in its way, the problem that faced the printers, in the ornamentation of the printed book, was rather more difficult than that presented to the illuminator. With the latter a wealth of colour might cover a multitude of sins; but the printer had to see that his decoration did not overshadow his type, which after all was his chief pride, and that the decoration of the book did not distract the reader’s attention from the subject-matter. Moreover, woodcutting was a very difficult art to learn. The mysteries of cross-hatching and shading were not to be mastered without many failures; in fact, the master wood-engraver was born, not made.

Such men as E. Ratdolt and N. Jenson in Venice, Pigouchet and Jean du Pré in Paris, Gerard Leeu, of Gouda and Antwerp, and many others, were turning out books that for beauty of typography and artistic decoration have never been surpassed. It might have been supposed that with such examples before them Caxton and his contemporaries in this country would have been spurred to emulation. English printers were in constant intercourse with Continental printers and booksellers, and had the opportunity of attending the great annual fair at Frankfort, where they could see all the latest productions of the Continental presses and where they could buy anything they wanted in the way of type, ornaments or binding tools. Yet so far were they from attempting to produce fine books, whenever such were called for—as Missals, Books of Hours, Psalters or Breviaries—they handed the work over to some foreign printer, with this result, to use the words of Mr E. Gordon Duff: “The poverty of ornamental letters and borders is very noticeable in all the English presses of the fifteenth century.”[4]

There are several reasons to account for this. In the first place, in 1471, the year in which it is believed that Caxton began to learn the art of printing in Cologne, the decoration of books was in its infancy, and few of the printers in that city had, up to that time, issued any books in which decorative blocks, other than perhaps an initial or two, were used. But what is of more importance, we know that Caxton’s chief object in, at a late period of his life, working in a Cologne printing office, was to save himself the labour and weariness of copying by hand the various works which he translated for the pleasure of others. He recognized that by the art of printing copies could be multiplied easily and quickly: that they would be easier to read than manuscript, and, provided that type, ink and paper were of good quality, would endure indefinitely. Caxton’s concern was to make his countrymen acquainted with the best literature—books of literary value, that would please readers, not by their prettiness, but for the matter that was in them. Hence all he wanted to know about printing was, how to set up type and how to ink and pull a clean and clear impression, and we know that he paid very little heed to decoration or ornament throughout his career as a printer.

Wynkyn de Worde was probably only just out of his apprenticeship when he entered Caxton’s service, and during his master’s lifetime he would naturally conform to Caxton’s rule and opinions in the matter of the make-up of the books.

Lettou and Machlinia, both foreigners, who came to this country in 1480, were chiefly concerned with printing law books, which did not lend themselves readily to decorative work, and their office was not a school in which to learn it. Hence we should not expect to find Richard Pynson, who was on friendly terms with Machlinia, and possibly learnt the rudiments of the art of printing in his office, and who certainly succeeded him, getting much knowledge as to the use of ornaments from such a master.

It is true that Theodoric Rood at Oxford used a decorative border as early as 1481, and that ten years later Caxton made a notable departure from his usual methods by surrounding every page of the Fifteen Oes with a border; but these were solitary exceptions.

The second reason for this was certainly lack of enterprise on the part of the English printers. This was largely due, no doubt, to the want of art training. The foreign printer had been taught the value of unity of design—a lesson for which the English printer had to wait until the nineteenth century. He designed his border to harmonize with his letterpress, and his initials to harmonize with his borders and beautify his letterpress.

But the English printers who followed Caxton would not concern themselves with these things. They were not actuated by the same motive that led Caxton to abstain from the use of ornament—that is, the belief that literature came before decoration. They viewed the matter from a purely commercial standpoint. To quote once again the words of Robert Copland, half a century later, in the Prologue to The Seven Sorrows that Women have when their Husbands be Dead, referring to the printing of the book he says: