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About this book

A Primer of the Art of Illumination for the Use of Beginners by F. Delamotte, 1874. The illuminated lettering primer — back in print.

Illumination — the medieval art of decorated letters and borders, revived by the Victorians — gets its beginner's manual here. Delamotte's 1874 primer teaches the illuminated lettering tradition from the ground up: the alphabets, the ornament, the colors, and the gilding of the page, in the plain teaching style of the South Kensington school.

The 132 pages are the foundation course in a beautiful art — the ancestor of the engrosser's flourished capitals and the calligrapher's decorated initials. For the lettering artist and the student of ornament, it is where the decorated letter begins: history, method, and practice in one slim volume.

The Victorian illumination primer, reproduced complete.

Details: PDF digital download, 132 pages.

⚠️ Please read before ordering — about print quality

This is a digital edition scanned from a historical document. The pages were scanned from an original 1874 printing, and the quality of your download 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 1874 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 1874 manual with all its character intact, you're in the right place.