tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">20 and 21; in the others we seem to look on Turkish design. The applicability of such fragments of ornament is manifold.

Fig. 17.

Fig. 18.

Fig. 20.

Fig. 19.

Fig. 21.

Figs. 22, 23, 24, and 25.

When the art of engraving aided the press in producing works of a decorative order, we occasionally turn over pages in which the master-minds of the day taxed their powers of invention. The old wood-engravers were supplied by designers with drawings of the best class, and very quaint and original are the ornaments which embellish the books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,—particularly such as were published in Germany, or at Lyons, the latter city being then most eminent for the taste and beauty of its illustrated volumes, the former for a bolder but quainter character of art. There are useful hints to be had in the pages of all, for such as would avail themselves of minor book-ornament. To render our meaning more clear, we select a series of scrolls (Figs. 22-25) for inscriptions from German books, of the early part of the sixteenth century, and which might be readily and usefully adapted to modern exigencies, when dates or mottoes are required either by the painter or sculptor. Ornamental frameworks for inscriptions abound in old books, and are not unfrequently of striking design and peculiar elaboration; we give an example in Fig. 26, from a volume dated 1593, as an excellent specimen of this particular branch of design. Such tablets not unfrequently headed the first page of a volume, and received in the centre the title of the book. The wood-engraver is thus the legitimate successor of the older illuminator.

Fig. 26.

A large demand was made on the imaginative faculties of the designers of that day by the metal-workers, the gold and silversmiths, the jewellers, and all connected with such decorative manufactures as the luxury of wealth and taste calls into exertion. The name of Cellini stands prominently forth as the inventor and fabricator of much that was remarkable; the pages of his singular autobiography detail the peculiar beauty of many of his designs; the Viennese collection still boasts some of the finest of the works so described, particularly the golden salt-cellar he made for Francis I. of France. The high art which he brought to bear on design applied to jewellery was followed by other artist-workmen, such as Stephanus of Paris, and Jamnitzer of Nuremberg. The metal-workers of the latter city, and of Augsburg, had a universal reputation at the close of the sixteenth century for their jewellery and plate, particularly the latter. They kept in employ the best designers of the day, and such men as Hans Holbein, Albert Aldegræf, Virgilius Solis, and a host known as the “little masters,” supplied the demand with apparent abundance, but it could only be satisfied by the multiplication of these designs by means of the engraver’s art. Hence we have at this period, and the early part of the seventeenth century, an abundance of small engravings, comprising a vast variety of designs for all articles of ornament; and from them we have selected, in Figs. 27 and 28, two specimens of those intended to be used in the manufacture of the pendent jewels, then so commonly worn on the breast of rich ladies. These jewels were sometimes elaborately modelled with scriptural and other scenes in their centre, chased in gold, enriched by enamel colours, and resplendent with jewels. The famed “Grüne Gewölbe” at Dresden have many fine examples, in the Louvre are others, and some few of a good kind are to be seen in the Museum at South Kensington. The portraits of the age of Francis I. and our Queen Elizabeth, frequently represent ladies in a superfluity of jewellery, of a most elaborate character. The portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, in our National Portrait Gallery, is loaded with chains, brooches, and pendants, enough to stock the show-case of a modern manufacturer. This love of elaborate jewellery was a positive mania with many nobles in the olden time. James I. was childishly fond of such trinkets, and most portraits represent the king with hat-bands of jewels, or sprays of jewellery at their sides. His letters to his favourite, Buckingham, are often full of details of the jewels in which his majesty delighted.

Fig. 27.