Note
In this, as in all corresponding plates, the object aimed at is to provide forms of lettering, at once tolerably legible, well-proportioned, and adapted to harmonize, both historically and artistically, with the styles of pictorial illumination given in connection with them. There are few faults more common in modern work, or more offensive to the educated eye, than the association of styles of lettering and styles of ornamentation warring with each other in the proprieties of both time and form. Against such it is our earnest object to guard the student, both by precept and example.
Plate X. furnishes some specimens of the beautiful borderings which enrich the pages of that most precious relic of the 15th century, the “Bedford Missal,” or, more properly speaking, “Book of Hours.” This exquisite volume has been so fully dwelt upon at pages 55 and 56, that it is necessary only to refer the reader to the notice given thereat.
In the examples collected on this plate, it is manifest that the pictorial has not been allowed to usurp the proper province of the conventional element of design, as it too frequently does in many works of the same period, particularly in Italy,—undoubtedly beautiful as much of the illumination of the 15th century was in that country.
Plate XI. provides an outline of Plate X., for fully colouring in facsimile.
Plate XII. shows the general style of the lettering, both capital and lower-case, the initials, and the borders which pervade this beautiful triumph of Flemish art. Of these, figs. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 are especially adapted for mural decoration, on, of course, a greatly enlarged scale.
M. D. W.
37, Tavistock Place, London.
April, 1861.