Books and Printing; a Treasury for Typophiles

by Unknown

Corneille de La Haye for Balthazar Arnoullet at Lyons, where there was a remarkable group of engravers at work about this time. From 1548 the books of Enea Vico printed at Venice begin the fashion in Italy, where, after 1550, examples are fairly numerous. In the Netherlands also, beginning with the work of Hubert Goltzius at Bruges, they are met with almost as frequently as in Italy. It was, perhaps, Christopher Plantin at Antwerp who, more than any other printer, made the engraved title-border the fashion for all larger and more important publications. But it is with the seventeenth century especially that engraved borders are associated. The Elzevirs used them even on their pocket editions, while at the other extreme the massive volumes issued at Amsterdam and at Paris in the reign of Louis XIV are almost invariably introduced by an elaborate engraved frontispiece....

DUGUÉ, ARIETTE, FOURNIER, PARIS, 1765. This rather ornate border shows what could be done with Fournier's new type ornaments. (Size, 7-1/4x10-1/4 inches).

Perhaps the worst examples of these overloaded frontispieces are to be found in German books of the period. Often, also, the engraved border is only a bastard title, the proper title page being set up in type. The earlier examples, dating from the sixteenth century, are in general the best, being simpler and not yet overburdened with a mass of detail. The good taste of the eighteenth century brought about a reform. But at Paris most books of this period had a typographic title page and the work of the famous school of French engravers was lavished on the illustrations. However, the engraved vignettes of that age were often very effectively used. Even Baskerville did not always disdain the vignette, and it was the last form of decoration abandoned by Bodoni.

One other form of decoration may be mentioned, that of metal rules. Rules have been used occasionally at almost all periods, by Geofroy Tory, for example, among others. But as far as title pages are concerned they are found most often in the seventeenth century.

THE DECEYTE OF WOMEN, A. VELE, LONDON, C. 1550. The combination of black-letter and a woodcut is a usual title page in an early English book. This undated example is probably mid-century, as the printer, Vele, is not heard of before 1548. The cut seems to date much earlier. (Size, 5-1/4x7-1/2 inches.)

The purely typographic title page is naturally of greater interest to the modern producer of books. At all periods the title page which was effective mainly by the arrangement of type has been common, and at most periods there have been printers who preferred to dispense with ornament of any kind. In the sixteenth century the books of the Paris printer, Michel de Vascosan, illustrate this severer manner, and the classical style of the great printers at the close of the eighteenth century was likewise independent of decoration. Some sort of arrangement of the letters displayed on the title page suggested itself from the first, and very soon various shapes were tried. Perhaps the commonest arrangement was the conical one, or the so-called hour-glass shape, in which the lines of type begin by being long, to become short at the center, lengthening again in the imprint at the foot. Others have preferred a natural arrangement, printing the matter exactly as if on a page of the text. Geofroy Tory, a book producer whose work was of great importance in the history of the book, seems to have been against the fashion of his day in his choice of the natural layout. It has certainly been the usual custom to aim at some sort of pattern in the division of the lines of type. In this respect the earlier printers had one advantage which was not enjoyed by their successors. They felt no difficulty about dividing a word in a title, even when the second part of the word was to be set in a different size or even a different kind of type. Frequently we find examples of such breaks in words as custom has made impossible for the modern printer. The simplification of the task for whoever was responsible for the layout is obvious. One rule which seems to have been almost universally observed is that the mass of the type must be in the top half of the page and not evenly distributed. [[Page 69].]