The Lions (or Leopards) of England, from the Tomb of William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, Westminster Abbey. 1296.
From the Tomb of Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster. 1296. Westminster Abbey.
Much the same principles apply to the treatment of the other “fearful wild fowl” of heraldry, as well as the necessity for very careful decorative spacing. I will only recall, in this connection, the spacing of the English leopards in the fourth quarter of the royal arms on a shield of thirteenth century shape as offering good field to a designer from the exercise of ingenuity in space filling.
OF THE DESIGNING OF BOOK-COVERS
The book-cover, as a field for surface design, appears at first sight to offer in its many varieties a less restricted field for invention than perhaps any portable object of common use which demands the attention of a decorator.
Yet in no field of design are certain qualities more essential to success—qualities, too, outside the particular conditions of the various methods, and processes used in the production of book-covers.
These are, in chief, tastefulness and sense of scale and proportion, important enough it will be said in all design, but narrowed down to the limited field of the book-cover, and in full view of its object and purpose, they become all-important.
Limited, for instance, to the narrowest demands of utility—an inscription or title on side or back needful to distinguish the outside of one book from another, questions of choice of scale, of lettering in relation to the size and proportion of the cover, of the choice of the form of the lettering and the spacing of the letters upon the cover immediately arise.