Once upon a time, Lanston Type Foundry had some gorgeous examples of work with fleurons. Perhaps Gerald Giampa is reading and can post.

BR!

I don’t know of any book per se, but certainly a cruise through the work of Bruce Rogers would give you lots of inspiration.

Another person who used ornaments with great skill is Fred Anthoensen, the scholarly printer who worked in Maine for most of the twentieth century. He did lots of work for the Peabody Museum of Salem, Massachusetts Historical Society, etc. Here’s just one example of his work.

Bruce

Lost image!

Hey, folks, what do I do here? I wanted to include a picture with my post. After I wrote my little paragraphs, I clicked on “insert image,” browsed to the location I wanted, added the jpeg picture, and watched the byte counter go up to 253. Pushed “post comment” but when I visited the real deal, no picture. What am I doing wrong?

Bruce (so newly arrived I’ve not even unpacked my bags yet)

Probably not a useful guide, but very inspirational.

http://uitgeverijdebuitenkant.nlware.com/boek/lijst.php?ID=124

Or: what can you construct from one shape only? Quite a lot, it seems.

http://www.octavo.com/editions/chkwks/index.html

http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~segalini/0506/gd2-project7_booklet.pdf

Bruce, don’t give up!

Hank, exactly (one of) the right idea(s). De Does’s Kaba stuff is a great example of the typographic ornamentation in which I’m interested, though it’s a real b***h getting hold of his stuff when you aren’t plugged into the type/design world professionally.

Bruce, you need to have the Flash Plug-in installed on your system. If you do you should see “Insert image” just below, and to the left, of the text entry box.

Okay, lemme try this again. Here’s a piece Fred did for some garden supply buddies in the 1940s. (He was a passionate gardener, which gives one pause: did the printer’s flowers come first, or the real ones?)

And I can’t resist adding one more, even though this is not what Maurice was asking about. In this case, it’s the title page for a novel, gotten up by the one and only W. A Dwiggins, but using only ornaments to compose the entire picture. Any of you who have worked with ornaments in metal will appreciate the work that went into locking up this little puppy.

Bruce

Exquisite. thanks for posting that Bruce.

“Monotype” FLOWER Decorations

A beautiful specimen published in London, 1924.
I think it was written by Stanley Morison and designed by Frederic Warde.

The Manual of Linotype Typography, 1923, is heavy on the ornament, with the “Updikist”(?) principal of historical allusion matching ornaments to typeface.

The Grammar of Ornament