⏳ 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

Before the printing press, every letter was drawn by hand — and F. Delamotte's 1886 Mediaeval Alphabets and Initials for Illuminators gathers the finest of them for the working artist. This Victorian pattern book presents the great manuscript alphabets of the Middle Ages: uncials, Lombardic capitals, Gothic blackletter, and the illuminated initials that made medieval pages glow.

Delamotte compiled the book expressly for illuminators — the artists decorating books, church work, and heraldic devices in the great nineteenth-century revival of manuscript art. Each alphabet is a working model: study the construction, copy the forms, and adapt the initials to your own pages. The 1886 vantage gives the book its charm — this is medieval lettering filtered through Victorian scholarship, at the height of the Gothic Revival.

For modern illuminators, calligraphers, heraldic artists, and tattoo letterers hunting authentic medieval forms, Delamotte's collection is a direct source. The Lombardic and uncial alphabets suit everything from wedding certificates to fantasy-novel chapter heads; the illuminated initials offer endless starting points for decorated pages. Sign painters doing period church or institutional work will find its Gothic forms historically honest.

Whether you illuminate manuscripts or simply love the medieval alphabet, this 1886 pattern book is a beautiful and practical addition to your shelf. History you can copy.

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This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document.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 1886 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 1886 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 1886 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.