Most certainly B.R.'s accomplishments surpass those decorative combinations of type ornaments shown in early printers' and type-founders' specimens—yes, even including the foremost achievements of the hallowed rule benders.
Little research is necessary to support these rather inclusive statements. An excellent example is the Utopia title page, done for the Limited Editions Club. Here is swirling movement in a border, if ever you saw it. And accomplished, mainly, with two traits of ornament and their reverses. The entire border took but several more.
Setting them out individually, doesn't give a hint of their possibilities. Yet look at the result of their use by B.R., scan the design closely to discover just where and how each element is placed with such telling effect—and you begin to appreciate the man's ability.
Another example—old stuff B.R. will call it—is the title page of a little Christmas book issued a dozen years ago by Rudge. Could one reasonably expect anything remotely approaching typographic whimsy from a few typographic toy soldiers, a dog, an elephant, a few Christmas trees, a half moon and some stars? Just glance at The Symbol and the Saint title page though, and see how B.R.'s subtle skill utilized material teetering toward the junk pile.
"Never," your perceptive collector will say, "has anything more masterful been done with type ornaments than in the Grolier Club Pierrot of the Minute." Few would disagree, for if ever there was a typographic jewel, the Pierrot is it. Yet B.R., in discussing it critically, termed it "French millinery. Probably all right for its purpose. Rather over-decorated, but then the poem itself seems over-decorative."
There are dozens of other examples of B.R.'s mastery of typographic decoration. But space is not limitless, and I want particularly to say something about some designs with Linotype ornaments (drawn by T. M. Cleland) that Mr. Rogers devised a few years ago for the Linotype Company. These were used for the first time in the insert discussing the auction prices of twenty B.R. books, which appeared in Barnacles From Many Bottoms, several of which are shown on pages 290, 299 and 300.