Printer's & publishers' devices in England & Scotland, 1485-1640.

  • McKerrow, R. B. (Ronald Brunlees), 1872-1940.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Printer's & publishers' devices in England & Scotland, 1485-1640. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    White Greyhound, and the Holy Ghost, but the device that he used represented a winged death-head (No. 341). Many more examples could of course be given, but these will suffice to show that a connection between the sign and the device is not always to be looked for, and we must enlarge our definition so that it includes any emblematic cut commonly used by a printer or publisher, pro- vided that it has no apparent reference to the subje6l-matter or author of the book in which it appears. Here of course we are at once in another difficulty, for we have to interpret the word ' com- monly,' and may be asked whether a device is any less a device because it only happens to occur once or twice. But, as I have said, it is hard to draw up a satisfactory definition; we must be content to regard certain blocks as lying on the border line and include or rejeft them as we please. There is, however, one troublesome question which must be referred to in passing. Some printers and publishers, including several of the smaller houses, instead of having a device specially cut for them, made common use of what cannot properly be regarded as more than an ornament, such as a rose, a mermaid, a monster's mask, a cherub's head or the like. Most of these were probably metal, and may have been cast, and it is therefore impossible to tell whether there was one block or several. There is at any rate no reason for denying that two or more printers/«^_)'have possessed similar casts. As examples of such ornament-devices we may take Nos. 259, 332, and 333. The first of these, a two-tailed mermaid blowing a pair of trumpets at the same time, was used at Cambridge by the elder John Legate from 1590 to 1598 and afterwards at London from 1615 to 1632. The others are a crowned rose used in two sizes from about 1598 to 1603 by Valentine Symmes. In neither case has the object represented anything to do with the sign of the house, and either of them may be simply a common ornament bought from a type- founder—the mermaid perhaps a foreign one. That I do not