Marco Polo: Devisement du monde; Jean de Mandeville: Voyages; Jean le Long d'Ypres: Récits de voyages
A mid-fifteenth-century French manuscript compiling travel accounts by Marco Polo, Jean de Mandeville and Jean le Long d'Ypres, held by a Swiss library and probably copied for a courtly or merchant reader. The page shows a decorated initial S in red and blue with gold, a line of red rubric above, and black gothic text in two lines, with a border of gold-tipped leaves and blue and red dots. A designer might take the gilded foliage, the dense small-dot background pattern, and the contrast of red rubric against black script as models for ornamental borders.
