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Design in Typography. XXV.—Running Borders,—Elementary Forms.

Among the fundamental principles of decoration is this—that one art should not attempt to borrow the effects of another. Neglect of this rule has led to most of the mistakes made by designers of typographic ornaments. Even when bringing to their work much artistic skill, they have often quite overlooked the special nature of the material with which they were dealing—its limitations on the one hand, and its peculiar advantages on the other. It is customary in some quarters to depreciate the value of type as an artistic medium, on the ground of its conventionality—the exact repetition of any given figure being an outrage upon the æsthetic perceptions of the critics. Hence, to avoid that which is the distinguishing characteristic—and therefore the special beauty—of art-work with types, designers have descended step by step from imitation Japanese vignettes to such depths of perverted « art » as are represented by « slobs, » « curlicues, » « button-holes, » « ragged-edges, » « ink-spots, » and such lunacies in letter-designing as « Owltype » and « Mikado. » ^* It should always be borne in mind that a printed page cannot be decorated on the model of an architectural work, a piece of pottery, or a garment. Just as some degree of irregularity is a necessary feature in an etched or lithographed work, and any attempt at exact repetition of ornament would be absurd: so, on the other hand, for the typographer to attempt to produce with his rectangular material the free and careless handling of the draftsman, is to waste time and court failure. In type-work, irregularity is a defect, and studied irregularity is folly. The more exact and regular the work, the greater its beauty; and by the accurate repetition of the same pattern secured by the use of cast types, we obtain that beautiful and unique class of ornament known as the Running Border.

Among the decorative appliances of the printing office, this is the most important. It is the simplest, the readiest in use, and—with the sole exception of the plain Rule Border—of most general application. Under the heading of « Rules, » we have already pointed out the important distinction between the single-unit or lineal border, and the one in which there is a succession or repetition of units, uniformly described in these articles as the « running » border. The « unit » —a term we shall have occasion to use very frequently—is the smallest or ultimate portion into which a border may be resolved, as fully defined and illustrated in vol. ii, p. 85. The simplest mark or sign, though possessing in itself no decorative quality whatever, becomes an ornamental border when repeated at regular intervals. The point is the simplest possible character, and the short dash or hyphen comes next in order. Neither of these possesses singly any ornamental quality; but in regular repetition, either of them will form a running border:—

And by the mere addition of a plain rule on each side, a very respectable effect is produced:

The above illustrates the simplest and most elementary of borders, as well as the most economical—the border of one character.It is to be found in many forms in old printed books; but was despised in the period of florid ornamentation which marked the early part of the present century. It is now coming greatly into favor among the more artistic printers, and numerous new designs, both in metal and brass, embody this principle. Typefounders have also found it worth while to hunt up matrices long discarded as obsolete, and the simple old patterns have had a large sale. Such, for example, as these:—

One of the latest productions of a large American foundry is called « Nic-nacs, » consisting merely of dots and very small square, triangular, and lozenge-shaped figures—cast uniformly on the centre of a nonpareil em. The Art Printer was enthusiastic in their praise. Probably nothing so cheap and simple in punch-cutting was ever before offered to the trade; but it has been found to fill a very useful place in art-printing. The special usefulness lay not in the nature of the character itself—which was not decorative; nor in its regular recurrence only—which constituted it a border. It is found chiefly in the fact that the interval of recurrence is a regular one, having a fixed relation to the body of the type, to other borders and rules as well as to the more elaborate combinations, and to the regular standard measures of columns and pages. Fulfilling the last of these conditions, the usefulness of these ornaments became at once apparent. As borders—and in a greater degree as adjuncts to rule-work and other borders, or as ground-tints—they had a wide range of usefulness. It is in the neglect of the third condition that the English designs fall short. Had they all been cast on the centre of an em of pica, or any other multiple of nonpareil, their usefulness would have been increased tenfold. One is cast to a small-pica em; another is small-pica x pica, and another, long-primer x two-line emerald. They are therefore adapted neither to regular measures, nor to work in combination with any other border.

There are many varieties of the one-character border, some very ornamental. We show a few, some of which are principally used as ground-tints:—

In light and open work, such ornaments may with advantage be spaced apart, and in most cases a rule on one or both sides adds to a printer has used the ordinary characters of a body-fount in this fashion. In themselves, they may be unobjectionable, but their familiarity, and their association with ordinary work, spoil the effect. We do not regard such as this as judicious or legitimate ornament:

The more familiar the symbol, the less it is suited for decoration.

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Combination rules of similar character were once much in vogue, and may be found in good-class bookwork of forty years ago. The variety and artistic beauty of modern rules and borders has superseded devices like this, which nowadays suggest the « 'prentice hand. »