Transmission of book-ornaments

 

As Richard Goulden has shown, printers in early-modern Europe and England commonly imitated and sometimes borrowed book ornaments from one another without legal restrictions (The Ornament Stock of Henry Woodfall, 1719-1747 [1988], 164ff). McKerrow also discusses this liberal "transfer of ornament-devices from one culture to another" (Printers' and Publishers' Devices in England and Scotland [1913], xxv). For documentation of the vogue in imitation-Elzeviers at this time, see Donald W. Davies, Elzeviers (148) and my forthcoming essay in ANQ.