A brief discourse concerning the three chief principles of magnificent building, viz, solidity, conveniency, and ornament
A 1662 London treatise on architecture by Sir Balthazar Gerbier, printed for booksellers and dedicated to the king, opening with a formal address to His Majesty. The pictures are typeset pages: one shows a dense black ornamental border of interlaced scrollwork and foliage, the other a decorated initial M beside a large-set title line in a clean serif face. A designer might take from them the model of a symmetrical scroll border and a historic pairing of ornamental capital letters with restrained seventeenth-century type.
