A Designer's Portfolio, 16th Century Style

Fascinating post by the always excellent Creative Review blog about ‘model’ or ‘pattern’ books, used by our design ancestors to show their work to potential clients — and to teach assistants how to reproduce the house styles. These books are extremely rare, but recently the British Library discovered a prime example – the so-called Macclesfield Alphabet Book, dating from c1500. It's filled with wonderful designs for different styles of script, letters, initials and decorative borders. Great post, with lots of great photos, too — read it here. Below is a detail of one of the pages.