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Design in Typography. Decorative Material.

Entering upon the third division of our subject—Decoration—we find a wide field before us, and one, so far as English typographic manuals are concerned, as yet unoccupied. On the general subject of Decoration an extensive literature exists, which may be studied with profit by the artistic printer; but so far as we are aware—and we have an extensive acquaintance with the literature of the craft—not one systematic treatise on the every-day subject of typographic ornament exists in the English language. Some such work is needed. We have never yet met with the compositor who did think he knew exactly how to set about a fancy job; when in fact, the special skill required is one of the rarest qualities to be found in the trade. Simplicity, unity of design, and harmony of effects—essential points of all good work—are not recognized by the average workman. Without the slightest technical training, and with such artistic capacity as he may possess entirely undeveloped, his only idea of a fancy job is to crowd together as many ornamental elements as possible—and if the work is in gold and colors to emphasize its defects by gaudy and inharmonious arrangements of staring hues. In fact, the distressing results of indiscriminate ornamentation are so common that many customers absolutely refuse to permit decoration of any kind to be introduced into their work. The really artistic printer suffers from the abuse of good material. The choicest and most beautiful designs are hackneyed and knocked about in the commonest work till the public eye is wearied of them. Can anyone forget the horrors of the outbreak of Japanese ornaments in every color of the rainbow six or seven years ago? Who does not remember the palms growing out of inverted flower-pots—the Egyptian obelisks in juxtaposition with Greek altars and Chinese pagodas, and the thousand other incongruities with which every kind of work—from folio handbills to trade cards and concert programmes—was decorated? The disgust occasioned by this abuse of good material could not fail to damage its legitimate effect and unnecessarily limit its use.

In every kind of art, Decoration is limited by the nature of the material employed. In every kind of art, the broad general principles by which it is governed remain the same. It should not be the primary consideration. It should harmonize with the general design, and should grow naturally out of it. It should not be thrown together at random, nor stuck in merely to fill a vacant place. Too great formality on the one hand, and extravagance on the other, are to be avoided; but the former defect is less serious than the latter. Simplicity is preferable to complexity. There should always be sufficient unoccupied space to bring the leading features of the work into due relief. The quality of « repose » gives a grace and dignity to work that is entirely absent when every available space is taken up with decoration.

Styles should not be mixed. While various combinations, and even the productions of different foundries, may sometimes be used with advantage in one piece of work, great caution is always required; and unless the compositor has shown proof of artistic skill and trained judgment, he should always be confined to a single combination in any given job.

In considering systematically the proper place and the limitations of typographic decoration, it is first of all necessary to classify the decorative material; and in so doing we may premise that the æsthetic revival of the past ten years or so has added several entirely new classes of ornament to the compositor's stores, besides permitting a freedom of treatment formerly impossible. There is thus a better field for individual skill, and a correspondingly greater risk of failure. There is no fixed system of classification, and the nomenclature varies arbitrarily, according to the ideas of the typefounder. For the purposes of these articles, therefore, we must make our own classification and definitions. It must be remembered that under any system the same material may be sometimes classed in more than one category.

I.	Ornamental Founts.
II.	Word and Line Ornaments.
III.	Initials.
IV.	Vignettes.
V.	Rules.
VI.	Corner-and Centre-pieces.
VII.	Running Borders.
VIII.	Ribbon and Tablet Designs.
IX.	Groundworks.
X.	Combination Borders.

— A better classification may be possible; but there will be no difficulty in placing any ornament in present use under one or other of the above divisions. Before taking them up in detail, it may be as well to define some of these titles.

Vignetttes.—We use this term in its widest sense, to include head-pieces, centre-pieces, tail-pieces, and « Card Ornaments » and « Corner Ornaments. ». Many so-called « combination borders » are really nothing of the kind, but mere collections of corner and centre vignettes. We shall strictly confine the term « Border » to such designs as may be combined or continued end to end so as to surround a piece of work.

Rules.—From this category we exclude the modern rules in which a pattern is repeated at intervals. These are merely borders in brass. We confine the term rules to purely lineal borders.

Running Borders are such as repeat the same design. A series may contain a single character only, or a running piece and a corner. Additional pieces are sometimes added for convenience of justification, but the number of characters rarely exceeds five or six.

Ribbon and Tablet designs are among the neatest and most legitimate forms of typographic decoration. They are of recent development. Under this head we may class wider extensions of the combination of type with brass rule, such as the various « Banner » and « Shield » designs. We shall be able to illustrate this portion of our subject from a very complete collection of such material.

Combination Borders afford a very wide field for examination and criticism. There is no limit to the size or number of their characters, and they may include every kind of ornament enumerated under the nine preceding heads. They may contain pieces varying in body from half-nonpareil to ten-or twelve-line pica. A single series may include any number of running borders of various sizes. There are rarely less than eight characters in a combination, and some recent productions exceed four hundred. It is in this line that the ingenuity of the designer has been most fully displayed, and that the skilled compositor finds the greatest scope for his talent. When we take up page 32this part of our subject, we shall have occasion to define the geometrical principles which underlie the design of a combination—the five or six pieces which are of the first importance in practical work, and yet which are so commonly overlooked by the designer, that several of them may be absent in a combination containing scores of sorts, and that an office may have fifty combinations, and yet not possess one that fulfils all the elementary conditions. With all their great and varied beauties, these costly combinations are often designed at random so far as adaptation to the exigencies of practical work are concerned. It will be our object to show that in this department, as in all others, there are fundamental principles involved, which cannot be violated or ignored without causing trouble, annoyance, and imperfection in the final result.