Referring to the books printed in Venice by Erhard Ratdolt in the years 1476 and 1477, Mr G. R. Redgrave writes: “They are plentifully enriched with initial letters, sometimes printed in red ink, and they have all of them the gracefully designed title-borders for which the books of Ratdolt are so deservedly famous.”

Erhard Ratdolt and His Work at Venice, p. 13
(Bibliographical Society’s Monograph, No. 1).

“The typography and illustrations of Vérard’s books, though justly celebrated, are distinctly inferior to the best productions of certain Parisian printers—for instance Jean Dupré; but in one respect he is without a rival—in the sumptuous illuminated copies on vellum produced for his royal and other distinguished patrons.”

Antoine Vérard, by John Macfarlane, 1900
(Bibliographical Society’s Monograph, No. 7).

On a certain day in the year 1530 or thereabouts, the following dialogue took place between Robert Copland, a printer in London at the sign of the Rose Garland in Fleet Street, and a customer of his, who desired him to print a quaint conceit which he called the Seven Sorrows that Women have when their Husbands be Deade.

The printer naturally wanted to see the manuscript, but the author replied that it was in his brain and not in his pocket.

Quidam.

To which the printer replies thus:

This confession of Copland’s, coupled with the fact that the author had a moment before expressed the opinion that a ‘penny’ was enough to spend on books, shows how great was the gap that separated the Continental from the English printer in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and accounts for the paucity of borders and ornaments found in English books up to 1500, noted by Mr E. G. Duff in the chapter which he added to Mr A. W. Pollard’s work on Early Illustrated Books.