I am interested in printed book decoration and printer’s marks and as I look more deeply into the possibilities of labelling with Iconclass, I wondered whether a further extension of notations would be suitable.
There are already notations in Iconclass to label book illustrations, such as
49M411 frontispiece
49M412 vignette
49M413 printed historiated initial
49M431 device (trade-mark of printer or publisher)
But for further ornamental decoration, only a broad notation applies:
49M42 ornamental decoration ~ printed matter, book
In addition to initials, vignettes and frontispieces, I could imagine further types of ornamental decoration in the notation section 49M41, for example, border and frame decoration as two further characteristics (in German „Leiste/Zierleiste/Randleiste/Kopfleiste“ and „Rahmen/Zierrahmen/ Titeleinfassung/ornamentale Umrahmung“).
Dear @Friederike - do you have some more concrete suggestions on which notations you would like to suggest adding to the system? (and what their textual translations should be)
Dear @epoz, it might be suitable for the notations not to be too narrow to start with, since ornaments were used variably, ornamental borders appeared as headpiece or could be put together to a frame (see here an example), frames could be title frames by framing title pages, but also be framing other text pages or also illustrations. From a German point of view, I think, these types could be grouped under two categories. It seems the same to me in English, although I am not quite as familiar with it and the classification terms seems to vary depending on the project, they are used for. But then, there would still be the possibility to further specify below these notations if necessary.
From my point of view, a classification under the notation 49M41 instead of 49M42 could work well, since the vignette is already placed there too.
With that in mind, here’s what I would suggest for discussion:
49M414 printed border ornament
with the translations:
Zierleiste (gedruckt)
bandeau (imprimé)
fregio (stampato)
49M415 printed frame ornament
with the translations:
Zierrahmen (gedruckt)
encadrement de page (imprimé)
cornice (stampato)
thanks for your suggestions. They do seem to provide a good starting point for discussion. I hope to be able to respond in more detail later this week.
thank you for the pictures, the examples reflect my suggestions well. Especially in the case of title frames, I think that the distinction from the engraved title page (what is called “Kupfertitel” in German) cannot always be drawn precisely. The last frame-example is definitely debatable. As far as I can tell from the picture, it could rather be an engraved titlepage. These illustrations are usually related to the content, but this is not always easy to judge and may not apply here. But the proposed category could be broad enough to apply it in ambiguous cases with many ornamental elements like this last one too, I would think.
Exactly my problem as a non-specialist: this is a domain where function, technique and form all intersect, which could lead to endless discussions about the “proper” way to describe these objects. IMHO the role of Iconclass is to help bring the historical “opponent” in the field in the first place. A certain amount of “vagueness” (or strategic ambiguity …) could then be productive. First we collect sufficient samples, tag them with standardized concepts, make them available for inspection by our colleagues - and then we may re-assess those concepts and perhaps refine them.
