Book decorations

Color Embossed cover of the publisher COVER of the first edition of Ben-Hur : A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace , 1880

In book design and graphic design, book decoration refers to all the decorative elements of a script.

introduction

The book decoration is found in the front matter , in print space in the page headings , column separator , bars and Kolumnenfuß , in the text, especially in initials and headlines , and also includes the entire Illustration , especially vignettes . The decorative elements also include decorative strips (as head, foot or edge strips), the strips often used as section separators and similar sentence elements. The decorative elements of the binding are also part of the book decoration.

The word itself did not become popular until the late 19th century to emphasize the new interest in artistically designed books, and is synonymous with book art in the book art movement.

History and methodology

Book decoration has its early heyday in Europe in book illumination , originally in simple rubrications , and in the course of the Gothic period increasingly splendid decoration. With the invention of the printing press , book decorations decreased rapidly. Stylistically, he is still based on medieval book illumination and takes up the formal language of decorative painting and, like this, in particular architecture . Color lithographs , as well as engravings and cuts , some of which are only a template for hand coloring , were used up until industrialization . The treasure trove of forms, however, is increasingly reduced to standardized ornaments ( letters with ornamental shapes). Since Hermann Zapf's typeface ITC Zapf Dingbats from 1978 at the latest , printing decoration has become a technical printing standard, excerpts of which are also standardized for web typography in the Unicode block Dingbats , for example . Thanks to modern desktop publishing , digital reproduction techniques and clip art libraries, book decoration is no longer an extreme additional expense in series production.

Jewelery on the cover is probably as old as the techniques of bookbinding itself and, in addition to calligraphic, graphic, painterly and typographical elements, also includes mechanical-handcraft embossing , engraving , notch cuts , niello and the like in the cover or cover material as well as fittings in metals, inlays , in Magnificent bindings also covered with gems and even jewels and other precious objects and applications.

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  Magnificent binding, Rhenish, early 13th century with applications from the 10th century

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  The Golden Bull , master of the Wenceslas workshop, around 1400 (copy)

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  Colored cover sheet of the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae by Guilherme Piso , 1648

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  Poetry with ornament. In: Hill's Manual , Chicago, 1882

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  Vignette by Johann Michael Funcke with the banner Soli Deo Gloria around 1715.

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  Art Nouveau book art : Heinrich Puchta - Spiritual songs and poems, 1908.

literature

• Karl Klaus Walther (Ed.): Lexicon of book art and bibliophilia. Nikol Verlag, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-937872-27-2 .

Web links

• Literature list for book art , art-service.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Entry book decorations. In: Otto Ladendorf: Historical keyword book . 1906 ( textlog.de [accessed on September 5, 2008]).