This spirited new "journal," which is to appear every nine
Months, makes a substantial quarto of about a hundred and fifty pages, with many illustrations. We are delighted to find that so serious an effort is being made to arouse interest in the arts of printing and book-production. Mr. Simon's note on title-pages is useful because it is accompanied by reproductions of numerous modern examples, the particular merits of which he indicates briefly. Mr. Percy J. Smith writes competently and wisely about initial letters, again with many examples. Mr. F. Meynell and Mr. Stanley Morison break new ground in a most instructive essay on the history and development of "Printers' Flowers and Arabesques," especially by the Italian and French printers, for whom Aldus, in his bindings rather than his books, was a pioneer. This delightful branch of decorative art, in which Frenchmen like Geofroy Tory and Bernard Salomon in the sixteenth century and the Cochin-Eisen group in the eighteenth century particularly excelled, is well worth closer study. Mr. B. H. IsTewdigate describes recent developments in printing, such as the much-discussed production of the Blackpool Times and Sunday Express supplement by offset printing, in which one has, so to say, a photograph of the type-matter rather than a printed impression of it. The main objection to this process is that the photographed type, being absolutely uniform in tone and lacking the variety of light and shade in impressed type, imposes, or seems to impose, a greater strain on the reader's eyesight ; but it is possible that this difficulty may be overcome. The examples of modern commercial printing given at the end of the volume deserve attention, notably a most attractive baker's advertisement by the Baynard Press. We shall look with interest for further issues of the Fleuron.
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