Published in Canada by General Publishing Company, Ltd., 30 Lesmill
Road, Don Mills, Toronto, Ontario.

Published in the United Kingdom by Constable and Company, Ltd., 3
The Lanchesters, 162-164 Fulham Palace Road, London W6 9ER.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 1995, is an unabridged republica¬
tion of the 1946 printing (“Twenty-first Impression”) of the 1939 revision,
published by Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., London, of the work origi¬
nally published in 1906 by John Hogg, London, in “The Artistic Crafts
Series of Technical Handbooks Edited by W. R. Lethaby.”

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Johnston, Edward, 1872-1944.

Writing & illuminating & lettering / Edward Johnston ; illustrated by
the author and Noel Rooke.
p. cm.

Originally published: London : I. Pitman, 1946.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-486-28534-0

i. Lettering. 2. Illumination of books and manuscripts. I. Title.
II. Title: Writing and illuminating and lettering.

NK3600.J6 1995

745.6—dc20 94-46428

CIP

Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineóla, N.Y. 11501

EDITOR’S PREFACE

In issuing these volumes of a series of Handbooks
on the Artistic Crafts, it will be well to state what
are our general aims.

In the first place, we wish to provide trustworthy
text-books of workshop practice, from the points of
view of experts who have critically examined the
methods current in the shops, and putting aside vain
survivals, are prepared to say what is good workman¬
ship, and to set up a standard of quality in the crafts
which are more especially associated with design.
Secondly, in doing this, we hope to treat design itself
as an essential part of good workmanship. During
the last century most of the arts, save painting and
sculpture of an academic kind, were little considered,
and there was a tendency to look on “design” as a
mere matter of appearance. Such “ornamentation”
as existed was usually obtained by following in a
mechanical way a drawing provided by an artist who
often knew little of the technical processes involved
in production. With the critical attention given to
the crafts by Ruskin and Morris, it came to be seen
that it was impossible to detach design from craft in
this way, and that, in the widest sense, true design
v

Editor’s

Preface