Abbregé chronologique, ou Extraict de l'histoire de France
This is a 1676 Paris abridged chronology of French history by François Eudes de Mézeray, published by Louis Billaine and later owned by John Adams, held in the Boston Public Library. The pictures are small woodcut ornaments and an engraved portrait: a decorated initial B framed in foliage, a fleuron of scrolling acanthus with a grotesque mask, a band of reclining figures beside a fountain, and a laurel-crowned bust in fine line hatching. A designer could draw on the dense, hand-cut botanical borders and the crisp hatched engraving style of seventeenth-century French book furniture.
