Please see the Transcriber’s Notes at the end of this text.
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EARLY WOODCUT INITIALS
EARLY
WOODCUT INITIALS
CONTAINING OVER THIRTEEN
HUNDRED REPRODUCTIONS OF
ORNAMENTAL LETTERS OF THE
FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH
CENTURIES, SELECTED AND
ANNOTATED BY
OSCAR JENNINGS, M.D.
MEMBER OF THE
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY
METHUEN AND CO.
36 ESSEX STREET
LONDON
First published in 1908
I DEDICATE THESE PAGES TO
MY WIFE
AS A SLIGHT RECOGNITION OF
HER CONSTANT PATIENCE
AND DEVOTION
[vii]
PREFACE
From the number of works that have beenpublished within the last few decadeson early printing and the decoration ofearly books, it is evident that an increasinginterest is taken in these subjects,not only by those whose studies havespecially fitted them to appreciate suchresearches, but also by the generaleducated public.
There is, however, one variety of engraving that hashitherto attracted but little attention, and the importance ofwhich, both from artistic and documentary points of view, isstill unrecognised, and it may even be said unsuspected by thegreat majority of students. Whilst every engraving thatmay technically be termed a cut or an illustration is cataloguedand recorded in the different monographs on specialprinters, those which take the form of initial letters, often ofequal, if not superior merit, are represented much moresparsely, and as having a secondary importance only.
In a monograph on fifteenth-century printing in a certainGerman town, for instance, the writer, a professional bibliographer,gives about ten or twelve initial letters, whereas theextent of the material upon which he might have drawn maybe judged from the fact that a more recent authority, in hishistory of one printer only of this town, has been able toreproduce more than fifty specimens, many of which are quiteequal in interest to illustrations proper, some of them havingbeen recently pointed out by a London expert as constitutingthe chief attraction of a volume[1] with both initials and illustr