Читать книгу Books and Printing; a Treasury for Typophiles - Various - Страница 22

Engraving on copper was practised in the fifteenth century, but the engraved title page originates about 1550. Curiously enough, the earliest known engraved border occurs in an English book, the Anatomy of Thomas Geminus, printed in London in 1545. In the following year we find a second example, cut by

Corneille de La Haye for Balthazar Arnoullet at Lyons, where there was a remarkable group of engravers at work about this time. From 1548 the books of Enea Vico printed at Venice begin the fashion in Italy, where, after 1550, examples are fairly numerous. In the Netherlands also, beginning with the work of Hubert Goltzius at Bruges, they are met with almost as frequently as in Italy. It was, perhaps, Christopher Plantin at Antwerp who, more than any other printer, made the engraved title-border the fashion for all larger and more important publications. But it is with the seventeenth century especially that engraved borders are associated. The Elzevirs used them even on their pocket editions, while at the other extreme the massive volumes issued at Amsterdam and at Paris in the reign of Louis XIV are almost invariably introduced by an elaborate engraved frontispiece....