Part 4

But besides these late-written books, in the first years of printing, the rubricator was generally, and the illuminator not seldom, employed on printed books themselves. In the early days of printing the big initials were almost always left for the rubricator to paint in in red and blue, and were often decorated with pretty scroll-work by him; and sometimes one or more pages of the book were surrounded with ornament in gold and colours, and the initials elaborately finished in the same way.

The most complete examples of this latter work subsidiary to the printed page are found in early books printed in Italy, especially in the splendid editions of the classics which came from the presses of the Roman and Venetian printers.

By about 1530 all book illumination of any value was over, and thus disappeared an art which may be called peculiar to the Middle Ages, and which commonly shows mediæval craftsmanship at its best, partly because of the excellence of the work itself, and partly because that work can only suffer from destruction and defacement, and cannot, like mediæval buildings, be subjected to the crueller ravages of "restoration."

HERE END THE NOTES ON EARLY WOOD-CUT BOOKS BY WILLIAM MORRIS. OF THIS BOOK THERE HAVE BEEN PRINTED ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY COPIES BY CLARKE CONWELL AT THE ELSTON PRESS: FINISHED THIS TWENTIETH DAY OF FEBRUARY, MDCCCCII. SOLD BY CLARKE CONWELL AT THE ELSTON PRESS, PELHAM ROAD, NEW ROCHELLE, NEW YORK

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Transcriber's note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.

Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed.