⏳ PRINTED ON DEMAND — Please allow 3–4 weeks for delivery

This book is printed one copy at a time when you order it. There is no warehouse shelf of these — your copy goes on the press after you check out. Hardcover binding takes longer than paperback. Please allow 3–4 weeks from order to delivery.

About this book

Freeman Delamotte was the Victorian drawing master who gave the 19th century its model alphabets — and his 1860 Book of Ornamental Alphabets Ancient and Modern is the one collectors still reach for. This is a treasury of decorated letterforms spanning the centuries: historiated initials and illuminated capitals drawn from medieval manuscripts, Roman and Saxon letters, Renaissance grotesques, and the ornamental Victorian hands of Delamotte's own day, all rendered as full-page plates for the designer to study and adapt.

The 'ancient and modern' of the title is the book's whole argument: that the letterer who wants to ornament well must know where ornament came from. The medieval plates — vine-work initials, gold-ground capitals, Lombardic letters — sit beside 19th-century fancy alphabets, giving the sign painter, illuminator, and designer a continuous visual history of the decorated letter to draw from.

For illuminators, engrossers, and heraldic artists, this is source material of the first order — authentic period ornament rather than modern imitation. For sign painters and letterers, the fancy alphabets and initial letters are a deep well of authentic Victorian display lettering, ready to be adapted to glass, gold leaf, and painted ornament.

An antique alphabet book that has been plundered by designers for 165 years — and still isn't exhausted. For letterers, illuminators, and collectors of the great Victorian alphabet books.

Details: 6×9" hardcover (case laminate), black and white interior, cream paper.

⚠️ Please read before ordering — about print quality

This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document. The pages were scanned from an original 1860 printing, and the print quality of your book reflects the condition of that original scan.

What that means in plain terms: you may see faded text, uneven inking, age spots, show-through from the back of pages, and other imperfections that were in the 1860 original or introduced by the scanning process. These are preserved as-is — they are not printing defects, and they are not something we can fix.

We are not responsible for the condition of the original source material. If you want a pristine modern typeset book, this isn't it. If you want the actual 1860 book with all its character intact, you're in the right place.

Printed on demand by IngramSpark. One copy at a time — no inventory, no waste.