University of Virginia Library

The basic technical problem of bibliographical description arises from the difficulty of expressing the visual in verbal terms. Parts of a description like the collation and contents paragraphs, which are condensed statements of sequential arrangement, can be handled easily enough in words or formulas; but the title-page transcription and the paragraphs on binding, paper, and typography present the same challenge that one meets in the attempt to frame an exact (not impressionistic) description of any physical object, whether it be a tree or a sculpture. Books are not exempt from the human urge to decorate empty spaces, and the descriptive bibliographer is faced with a wide array of patterns and designs (as in binding cloths and endpapers) which he must somehow record in a fashion precise enough to serve as an identification.

Among the decorative elements of a book, patterns and illustrations can be usefully distinguished. A pattern results when a figure (or combination of figures) is repeated (either exactly or approximately) at regular (or irregular) intervals or in a systematic arrangement; if a figure (or combination of figures) appears only once, the result is an illustration. While illustrations are frequently representational and patterns abstract, these qualities do not serve to distinguish the two, since a representational figure can be repeated as the motif in a pattern and an abstract figure can be used by itself as a single decoration. Repetition — whether precisely detailed or suggestively vague — of a basic unit is the essential feature of a pattern, and it provides a means for classifying the pattern. Although the number of possible patterns is infinite, individual patterns bear structural relationships to one another and can be grouped into a limited number of families. Whenever such a framework can be established as a standard of reference, verbal descriptions can become both more concise and more exact. Illustrations, by their nature, are less readily amenable to identification on the basis of a structural classification (though they can be

classified by technique of reproduction) and therefore present a separate problem. Pragmatically, from the bibliographer's point of view, illustrations can best be handled, as they come up, on an individual basis; but patterns, which occur in some form in nearly every book, can often be treated most meaningfully and efficiently in terms of a classification scheme.

There are three ways in which patterns can be recorded in a bibliography — in pictures, in words, or in a combination of the two. The first is the most straightforward and explicit method and at the same time the most objectionable — and not simply on the grounds of expense. To rely exclusively on photographs of patterns is to abandon description in favor of reproduction. The task of a description is to provide a verbal identification which can be quoted in contexts where pictures are inappropriate. Pictures may of course be useful supplements to a description, but they are not substitutes for any part of it. The opposite extreme, of describing patterns exclusively in words, can be successful and precise only if an adequate vocabulary has evolved. In heraldry, for example, the technique of blazoning utilizes a special vocabulary and syntax which make the resulting descriptions both concise and unambiguous. The bibliographer has no such established terminology to draw on in describing patterns, except perhaps in the case of marbled papers. As a result, bibliographical descriptions of patterns must use some kind of combination of words and pictures. That is, the description itself will contain only words (preferably a standardized wording which will convey the same meaning to a large number of readers), but part of that verbal description will be a reference to a readily accessible illustration; in this way any reader who cannot visualize the pattern from the verbal description clearly enough for his purposes can look up the illustration which serves as a standard of reference.

The two essentials, then, in the bibliographical description of patterns are a standard terminology and a visual standard of reference. In a few areas, bibliographers already have such references at their disposal — R. B. McKerrow and F. S. Ferguson's Title-page Borders Used in England and Scotland, 1485-1640 (1932) is a good example — but for the most part no accepted standards exist. Enough research has taken place in certain areas, however, that it would not be premature to attempt to codify a standard of reference for those areas, particularly if it is set up in an expandable fashion, so that additions can be made in the future without affecting the basic classification. Patterns in books generally appear in one of three media: in binding cloths, both

as a grain and as a stamping upon the grain; in decorated papers, whether used as endpapers or as a covering for boards; and in sheets of letterpress, either as borders or as divisional indicators. Each of these areas involves special problems and should be considered separately.