The Art Of Illuminating As Practiced In Europe From The Earliest Times: Illustrated By Borders, Initial Letters, And Alphabets Selected And Chromolithographed By W. R. Tymms. With An Essay And Instructions By M. D. Wyatt M. D. Wyatt

Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. An acceptable condition book. An ex-library copy with the usual amount of stamps. No dust jacket. Light shelf wear. Book spine and edges are extremely worn, with full splitting down both spine edges and cracks in the hinge beside each board that makes them both feel fairly loose. The bulk of the intricate board designs do remain intact and the gilding is still bright. The majority of the textblock binding also remains intact and fairly firm, but two very significant crackc in the hinge close to half of the way through threaten to separate the book into sections and requires gentle handling. The saving grace of this copy is the pages themselves, which consistently seem to show only light tanning and a touch of dust to the edges and clean, pleasantly bright centres. Textblock edges are gold gilded. The text sections of the book are finely illustrated with intricate red borders and the illustrated plates remain stiff and vibrant with nicely uncreased tissue guards throughout. A very well cared-for book within the covers and fine for use as a reading copy only. As the name implies, illumination is the practice of decorating book pages with glimmering gold or silver leaflets, rich pigments, intricate borders, and even elaborate paintings. These embellishments imbued text with “light” and turned each book into an elevated experience, of which the contents of this copy are no exception.