Catalogue descriptif et historique du Musée royal de Belgique, Bruxelles : précédé d'une notice historique sur sa formation et sur ses accroissements
A nineteenth-century museum catalogue from Brussels, published in 1877 by the Typographie Bruylant-Christophe under the Musées royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique, with an historical introduction by Edouard Fétis, aimed at scholars and visitors of the royal collection. The pictures are painters' monograms and signatures in ornate script, such as 'B. Vander. helst 1664' and 'BOL 1660', showing how seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish artists signed their work and dated it. A designer could take from them a range of hand-lettered monogram forms, with flourished capitals, looped initials and swash strokes, usable for logotypes or heritage lettering.
