Lettres patentes dv Roy, povr l'institution & ouuerture des grãds iours en la ville de Poictiers, pour ceste presente annee: et les seneschaussees, bailliages, & gouuernement, y resortissans. Et de l'authorité & temps d'iceux.
This is a 1579 French royal decree printed in Paris by Fédéric Morel, setting up the grands jours court at Poitiers and its regional bailiwicks. The pictures are woodcut printers' ornaments: a strapwork frieze with a lion mask, a decorative initial H framed by scrollwork and grotesques, a tiered hexagonal fountain with a putto, and a Newberry Library bookplate with a bust in an oval; a designer could draw on the dense foliate and grotesque ornament of 16th-century French printing.



