Two books of constancie
A 1594 London printing of Justus Lipsius's Two Books of Constancie, a Christian moral treatise from the Princeton University Library collection, printed by Richard Johnes for a general readership of English-speaking readers. The pictures are sixteenth-century woodcut ornaments: a decorative strapwork band, a central panel flanked by hanging lamps and books, a repeating scroll border, and a large initial A filled with foliage. A designer could take from them the interlaced scrollwork, symmetrical cartouches, and the way an enlarged letter can be built from curling vines.
