Engraving on copper was practised in the fifteenth century, but the engraved title page originates about 1550. Curiously enough, the earliest known engraved border occurs in an English book, the Anatomy of Thomas Geminus, printed in London in 1545. In the following year we find a second example, cut by Corneille de La Haye for Balthazar Arnoullet at Lyons, where there was a remarkable group of engravers at work about this time. From 1548 the books of Enea Vico printed at Venice begin the fashion in Italy, where, after 1550, examples are fairly numerous. In the Netherlands also, beginning with the work of Hubert Goltzius at Bruges, they are met with almost as frequently as in Italy. It was, perhaps, Christopher Plantin at Antwerp who, more than any other printer, made the engraved title-border the fashion for all larger and more important publications. But it is with the seventeenth century especially that engraved borders are associated. The Elzevirs used them even on their pocket editions, while at the other extreme the massive volumes issued at Amsterdam and at Paris in the reign of Louis XIV are almost invariably introduced by an elaborate engraved frontispiece....
[Illustration: DUGUÉ, ARIETTE, FOURNIER, PARIS, 1765. This rather ornate border shows what could be done with Fournier's new type ornaments. (Size, 7-1/4x10-1/4 inches).]
Perhaps the worst examples of these overloaded frontispieces are to be found in German books of the period. Often, also, the engraved border is only a bastard title, the proper title page being set up in type. The earlier examples, dating from the sixteenth century, are in general the best, being simpler and not yet overburdened with a mass of detail. The good taste of the eighteenth century brought about a reform. But at Paris most books of this period had a typographic title page and the work of the famous school of French engravers was lavished on the illustrations. However, the engraved vignettes of that age were often very effectively used. Even Baskerville did not always disdain the vignette, and it was the last form of decoration abandoned by Bodoni.
One other form of decoration may be mentioned, that of metal rules. Rules have been used occasionally at almost all periods, by Geofroy Tory, for example, among others. But as far as title pages are concerned they are found most often in the seventeenth century.