

ART AND CRAFT IN BOOK ILLUSTRATION. 
(InuustrateD By THE LanTERN.) 
By ALEX. MACIVOR, M.I.M.E. 24th October, 1905. 

Mr. Maclvor, who illustrated his subject by the lantern and a 
large number of book illustrations and printer’s blocks, spoke for 
nearly an hour and a half, in which he reviewed the history of 
book-pictures from the picture writing of the ancient Egyptian, 
illustrated by a fine reproduction by the British Museum 
authorities of ‘‘ The Book of the Dead,” from the papyrus of 
Hunifer, an overseer of the Palace of Seti I., King of Egypt, 
about B.c. 1870. ‘The examples he had chosen to illustrate his 
subject, included the Loutrell Psalter representing agricultural 
processes, dated about 1840, and woodcuts from Comenius’ 
‘Orbis Sensualum Pictus,” English edition of 1659, showing 
how the various crafts and trades carried on their occupations. 
Coming to the earliest days of printing, about the second 
quarter of the Fifteenth Century, were pictures of St. Christopher 
and St. John, valueless as works of art, but interesting as being 
the first pictures which the common people had. Rude, though 
they were, they were the treasures of the poor illiterate peasant 
and humble artisan, who, hanging them on the walls of their 
poor huts, had brought before their eyes in daily sight the reality 
of holy living and holy dying of that Saviour and His martyrs, 
in whose intercession and prayers their hope of salvation lay. 
In the middle of the Fifteenth Century, wood engraving, the 
youngest of the arts of design, held an established position. In 
art its discovery was the parallel of printing in literature ; it was 
a means of multiplying and spreading the ideas expressed by art, 
and of bringing beautiful design within the reach of a larger body 
of men. It was difficult for a modern mind to realise the place 
which pictures filled in medieval life, before the invention of 
printing had brought about that great change which resulted in 
making books almost the sole means of education. The concep- 
tion of a complete picture, simply in black and white, was a 
comparatively late acquisition in the art. This was to be seen 
in an example from the ‘‘ Chronicle of Nuremberg,’’ in 1493, 
probably the work of Michael Wohlgemuth, the master of Albert 
Diirer. The volume marked the beginning of that great school 
