Rare letters and borders that once enhanced medieval bibles and other rare manuscripts are ornamented with exquisite florals, curvilinear motifs interwoven with religious figures, and other exquisite embellishments. More than 350 designs, including 256 letters.

Royalty-free reproductions of authentic Victorian borders: florals, foliates, animals, mythical creatures, interlacements, more. Moderately priced for today's graphic designers.

Recapture the historic grandeur of medieval art with lovingly detailed reproductions ranging from the creation of Eve to the Hundred Years' War. Thirty images include Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and secular sources.

The magnificent pages of medieval missals, books of hours, breviaries, and bibles sparkle with detail illuminating the world in which they were created. This splendid volume, featuring some of the finest illuminated masterpieces from the exceptional collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, details the remarkable collaboration and craftsmanship that went into the creation of these delicate treasures. Close-up details show the intricacies of the various techniques used to create these fragile and rarely seen works. By helping the reader to appreciate the individual elements of illumination--the initials, borders, illustrations, script, and binding--Rowan Watson brings the world of the scribes, illuminators, and book dealers to life, and sheds light on the cooperative religious communities in which many of them worked. Watson also looks at the survival of illumination after the printing press and its revival in the 19th century in the hands of such pioneering designers as Owen Jones and William Morris.

Extraordinarily beautiful and decorative letters of the alphabet — imaginatively ornamented with royal and saintly figures, mythical creatures, knights in battle, flora and fauna, more.

The Getty Museum’s collection of illuminated manuscripts, featured in this book, comprises masterpieces of medieval and Renaissance art. Dating from the tenth to the sixteenth century, they were produced in France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, England, Spain, Poland, and the eastern Mediterranean. Among the highlights are four Ottonian manuscripts, Romanesque treasures from Germany, Italy, and France, an English Gothic Apocalypse, and late medieval manuscripts painted by such masters as Jean Fouquet, Girolamo da Cremona, Simon Marmion, and Joris Hoefnagel. Included are glistening liturgical books, intimate and touching devotional books for private use, books of the Bible, lively histories by Giovanni Boccaccio and Jean Froissart, and a breathtaking Model Book of Calligraphy.