Talk:Rubrication

Comments
In "This particular type of rubrication is similar to flourishing, wherein red ink is used to style...", flourishing is mis-linked to an article that begins, "Flourishing is an area of study in the field of positive psychology", i.e., an irrelevant page. Jwpat7 (talk) 18:19, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

For decorated (illuminated, historiated,etc) books, the scribe worked also with the miniator. Many early printed books (incunabula)are illuminated, as well as manuscripts. When a printed book has no place or printer's name, the rubricated initials may give a clue to these; e.g. pearled lombardy ones are typical of southern Germany especially, and the rubricator sometimes added a date on the final leaf, and hence we may know that the book was printed "[not after e.g.1481]". The historical progression in printed books was from elaborately decorated initials, starting 1452, often with gilding, to careful but plain ones, placed in indented gaps in the type-page. When the rubricator made a mistake, the circles within lombardic letters made it possible to insert the correct letter within, without sponging the letter off. Later, tiny lower case guide letters were printed in the space, intended to be painted over. Which was made easier by using roman letters. Still later, printed borders and initial letters in black eliminated the work of the rubricator, though at first with the letters in outline intended to be filled with colour. Or ordinary ink was used for hasty initialling. Many books were never rubricated at all, in spite of having gaps for the initials. A pleasing effect was achieved by using alternate capitals of red and blue in some books, and in others red for large and another colour for small initials. The tedious task of adding an upright stroke of colour to every upper case letter throughout the book ceased at a fairly early date. The extraordinary beauty of early incunabula printed on rag paper, with leaves approximating the golden mean, type pages offset from centre to give an artisticly pleasing effect, fine fonts, and skilfull rubrication, are unfortunately seldom seen; all too often the ample margins vital to this effect have been cropped by rebinding.Colcestrian (talk) 02:14, 6 May 2009 (UTC)