Abstract
Images of printed books online makes it increasingly possible to trace the use of specific printing types and design features across a wide range of publications to reveal new information about the working practices of Elizabethan printers. This study concerns two of these: the fleuron and the blank printed music stave. In the second half of the sixteenth century, an increasing number of music copyists chose to write their manuscripts on to paper with printed music staves. A subset of these music papers contains decorative fleuron borders that might be used to attribute them to specific printers or time-frames through comparison with other printed materials. This paper traces the history of three varieties of bordered music paper and explores the potential functions of framing staves in this way with regard to both music paper and printed music collections.
Highlights
With the growing availability of images of printed books online, it is increasingly possible to trace the use of specific printing types and design features across a wide range of publications to reveal new information about the trade
This study concerns two of these: the fleuron and the blank printed stave, neither of which have received attention from more than the occasional scholar.[1]. These elements are used to clarify questions of chronology, to explore the diverse functions served by seemingly decorative elements of page design, to reveal new information concerning the career of the Elizabethan printer Thomas East, and to highlight the relationship between the music trade and the wider printing industry, neither of which can be treated in isolation
From 1588 until his death in 1608 Thomas East was the premier music printer in England, working as the assign for first William Byrd and later Thomas Morley as they held their successive monopolies for the printing of polyphonic music and music paper
Summary
With the growing availability of images of printed books online, it is increasingly possible to trace the use of specific printing types and design features across a wide range of publications to reveal new information about the trade. This study concerns two of these: the fleuron and the blank printed stave, neither of which have received attention from more than the occasional scholar.[1] These elements are used to clarify questions of chronology, to explore the diverse functions served by seemingly decorative elements of page design, to reveal new information concerning the career of the Elizabethan printer Thomas East, and to highlight the relationship between the music trade and the wider printing industry, neither of which can be treated in isolation. Vervliet, ‘The Combinable Type Ornaments of Robert Granjon, 1564–1578’, Journal of the Printing History Society, 22 (2015), 25–61; Francis Meynell & Stanley Morison, ‘Printers’ Flowers and Arabesques’, The Fleuron, 1 (1923), 1–46; Juliet Fleming, ‘How to Look at a Printed Flower’, Word and Image, 22 (2006), 165–87; ‘How Not to Look at a Printed Flower’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 38 (2008), 435–71; ‘Changed Opinion as to Flowers’, in Renaissance Paratexts, ed. by Helen Smith and Louise Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 48–64; Iain Fenlon and John Milsom, ‘‘Ruled Paper Imprinted’: Music Paper and Patents in Sixteenth-Century England’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 37 (1984), 139–63 (pp. 145–47)
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