Lettres de monsieur de Balzac
Lettres de monsieur de Balzac is a 1626 French letter collection by Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, published in Paris by Toussaint du Bray and held by Duke University Libraries, aimed at a literate French readership. The pictures are four near-identical woodcut decorated initial M letters, each a large capital framed by stylised foliage, scrolls and leaf borders on a cream ground, showing how a single printer's ornament was reused across pages. A designer could take from them the dense, hand-cut vegetal framing of early seventeenth-century French printing for display capitals or pattern work.
