[Illustration: This is a design by Eugene Grasset for the heading of a department in “La Revue Encyclopédique.” It represents French designing art at its best. It is free from conventionality, and yet orderly and well balanced. The Auriol design for “La Revue Encyclopédique” is bold and striking, but not as perfect as this.]
■simple. The good bookmaker never forgets his pages are for reading. So, a Gothic ornamental letter that might be appropriate in a stained glass window or on a hand-painted testimonial might be offensive throughout a printed book. I know of nothing more inartistic, more nauseating to critics, than the millions of lithographed mottoes, Christmas cards, etc., that the English lithographic publishers have put out for the last decade—overburdened with ornament that should be painted and not printed. And so the whites in this sixth century A, and the dotted outline around it, make { 204} it in a way less appropriate for general printing than the solid black, twelfth century A.
The middle A is in the style of the wood-cut Venetian letter of the sixteenth century; and while on general principles a gray background like this is not so satisfactory as a black one, yet this is not a bad specimen of designing, for the stipple could be punched into the wood very deeply, and is so near together that if one hole did fill up it would not be missed. However, it, too, must not be used for general printing, but only as rich ornament. It is well balanced, mind you, and therefore the detail is not so worrying as would be as much detail put in freehand, aimlessly and unbalanced.
If you will now turn to the cover design of the Larousse given in the August number, you will find it a beautiful production by Grasset, wherein we see also some decorative elements that may be studied in conjunction with what we have written in this and preceding chapters about letters. For example, the use of line with silhouette—we find a dandelion leaf reduced to silhouette, and another laurel wreath like the one pictured on the head of Goethe’s mother. But the lettering of the title is the most interesting part of it. Grasset has studied the Caroline letter, and reproduces it with very scholarly fidelity. Only when you have studied an example like the Caroline alphabet we give from Strange’s book can you appreciate the workmanship and good taste in the Grasset. A companion piece to this is the heading by Auriol where we see a modification of the monumental letter and the uncial as in the d and the r. Here the initials J J and the initial L are Gothic in principle, and you will not fail to see how■