English printers' ornaments / by Henry R. Plomer.

  • Henry Plomer
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: English printers' ornaments / by Henry R. Plomer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    20/312 page 4
    illustrating, if it were a service book, scenes in the life of Our Lord or fragments of sacred history. They further found that at the commencement of the text was a richly illuminated initial letter. The blank spaces at the ends of paragraphs were sometimes filled with decorative ornament. The scribe, moreover, placed no dividing line between the various parts of the text. If he was beginning a new chapter he started at the top of a new page, leaving a blank space at the bottom of the preceding one, although, very rarely, illuminated head-pieces are found. Again, at the end he simply put the colophon, often a most illuminating little paragraph, not only notifying when and where he finished his task, even to the hour, but very often giving the name of the person who had commissioned the book, and returning thanks to God for giving the writer health and strength to finish it. The only other * ornaments ’ they found were the paragraph marks, the reversed C or ^ still in use at this day, which can be traced back to the fourteenth century and pei haps earlier, and the cross or Maltese cross, generally met with in manuscript Books of Hours, and probably quite as old as the paragraph mark. All this the first printers followed as closely as they could. Their books had no title-pages; they put the title above the first page of text, which they began as high up on the paper as they could.
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