The Illustration of Books by David Bland

One of the problems I’ve been having at work is knowing what type of image an illustration is, and how to tell. So I found this book in our reading room and thought it’d be a good place to start. First of all it has an excellent glossary at the back which explains the words used for the different types of images, their processes and when they were used. The book itself is divided into the history of illustrations, and the ways in which different processes are used. The history section is quiet interesting, amusingly enough he is quite harsh on the early English illustrators in favour of their European counterparts, however apparently by the 19th century we are finally able to catch up and compete with the rest of Europe. The description of the types is also informative. The only failing of this book is there are very few illustrations. The author however, does state in his preface that this is because he intended it to be a book for students to use and so wanted to keep the costs down, (it was published in 1953).

It seemed like a good introduction, was interesting and I think I shall be photocopying the glossary section and keeping the notes at my desk.