Illustration: Matthew Digby Wyatt. Title page of The Art of Illuminating, 1860.
Matthew Digby Wyatt's 1860 publication The Art of illuminating as Practiced in Europe From the Earliest Times opens with the following statement:
A cursory inspection of this volume will at once suffice to convince the student, that the principal aim of all who have concurred in its production has been to render it as practically useful as possible, to those who may desire to see illumination revived as one of the most graceful Decorative Arts of the present day.
This may well give the impression that Wyatt was intending to revive the art of hand illumination despite four hundred years of printing. However, he soon made it clear that there was no point in promoting any idea that printing could be replaced and instead, like many nineteenth century promoters of good design skills, it was seen as more of a matter of compromise with the contemporary world. The teaching of illumination and calligraphy was to be seen as an added dimension within the printing trade, expanding the compositional and style repertoire of the designer.
In many respects this did hold true for the nineteenth century which saw a steep rise in mock illumination, particularly for all forms of celebratory work such as printed awards, dedications and invitations. It is still relatively common to find elaborate award dedications in many nineteenth century books. A large percentage of these came from Sunday schools, many of which had a vested interest in promoting Christian illuminated work that gave at least an indication that it was medievally inspired.
Wyatt tried to show through examples of medieval illumination as well as reinterpretations of his own, how the medieval could be manipulated and reenergised to suit a modern and contemporary industry and populace. Fonts and text could be expansive and imaginative and used in combinations in order to produce pages that were pleasant to the eye and ease reading, much as our own printing styles do today.
Although Wyatt might well have suggested and perhaps preferred that his book appealed to the potential professional printer through the student, he must also have been aware of the huge potential that could be found through amateur hobbyists. Just as calligraphy is a hobby and pastime for many people in our own contemporary world, the same was true of illumination and calligraphy in the nineteenth century. Interestingly the appeal has changed very little in the intervening generations. To produce and understand either illumination or calligraphy is to understand patience and an ability to focus on one task. While this is true of most craft practices, illumination seems more acutely focused on the contemplative. The practice takes the individual outside of the world of the immediate, the ephemeral and the instant, and particularly in our own contemporary world, the multi-task is sacrificed for that of the single-task.
So despite the fact that Wyatt was ready to admit that his publication was aimed more or less specifically on the uses of illumination within the industrial process of modern printing, it was also to appeal, at least to a certain extent, to an element of amateur hand production that although limited to hobbyists, did give people a certain focus and enjoyment, even an element of romantic connection with their medieval ancestors.
In the nineteenth century, the rate of development of the industrial process, along with the directly associated expansion of the urban environment with all its noise and distractions, meant that a dedicated space of quiet contemplation was paramount to some. Although the idea of the hobby was very much a middle-class pursuit which often entailed and developed a number of the original craft skills of the working classes, this does negate the fact that a genuine interest was fostered in such skills as illumination, which tied in very neatly with the Gothic Revival and its ever expanding remit to overhaul all elements of the decorative arts of the nineteenth century, including the printing industry.
It is perhaps true to say that the first half of the nineteenth century lacked a great deal of creative input as far as the printing world was concerned. Much of the typed work produced was tightly spaced, using small and dark fonts, so that reading was hard on the eyes and sometime nearly illegible. Anyone who has tried to read early nineteenth century magazines and newspapers for any length of time will know what I mean. As to any form of decorative aspect within a magazine, they were limited and often missing altogether. Admittedly this had much to do, in Britain at least, with the paper tax that was not finally abandoned until 1860. By then an expansion of any form of creative input within the publishing industry was well and truly overdue. Perhaps in some respect, Wyatt's The Art of Illuminating which was published in the same year as the abandonment of the paper tax was a creative response, showing publishers and printers what was possible with a little ingenuity, foresight and creative expansion.
This was by no means the only publication on the subject of illumination by Wyatt. Another entitled What Illuminating Was. A Manual of the History of the Art was published in the following year 1861.
Further reading links:
The Art of Illumination
The British Library Guide to Manuscript Illumination: History and Techniques (British Library Guides)
Calligraphy and Illumination: A History and Practical Guide
The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the "Belles Heures" of Jean de France, Duc de Berry (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Illuminated Initials in Full Color: 548 Designs (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)
1001 Illuminated Initial Letters: 27 Full-Color Plates (Dover Pictorial Archives)
Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art
Book of Hours: Illuminations by Simon Marmion
Early Medieval Bible Illumination and the Ashburnham Pentateuch
Trades and Crafts in Medieval Manuscripts
Tradition and Innovation in Later Medieval English Manuscripts
Magic in the Margins: A Medieval Tale of Bookmaking
Early Medieval Book Illumination
Between France and Flanders: Manuscript Illumination in Amiens in the Fifteenth Century (The British Library Studies in Medieval Culture)
Revival of Medieval Illumination/ Renaissance de l'enluminure Medievale: Nineteenth-century Belgium Manuscripts and Illuminations from a European Perspective/ ... XIXe Siecle et Leur Contexte (Kadoc Artes)
Manuscript Illuminations in Lyons (1473-1530) (ARS 3) (Ars Nova)
The Romance of the Rose Illuminated: Manuscripts at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies (Series), V. 223.)
