In the original dust jacket. Yellow cloth binding with blue title on the spine and front board.

We provide an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available. 

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Please view our photographs and read the rubric on the inside of the dust jacket. The retail price for a new copy of Illustration and Ornamentation in the Iberian Book World, 1450–1800 is $218.00 / €245.28 directly from the publisher Brill. Marketplace prices online typically range between £154.00 and £155.00. Because Brill volumes are expensive, highly specialised academic reference books, a copy in fine condition holds a strong secondary market resale value for research libraries or academic collectors.

 Contents & Academic Overview

The book spans 544 pages and is part of Brill’s prestigious Library of the Written Word series. It consists of 19 academic contributions (chapters) curated by Alexander S. Wilkinson that investigates print culture, typography, and graphic arts across early modern Spain and Portugal. 

The collective chapters address several core areas of book history:

• Identifying Unmarked Prints: A major focus is showing how printers’ materials—like woodblocks, initial letters, and copper engravings—are used by bibliographers to trace the date and origin of the one-third of all early modern Iberian books that were published completely without an official imprint. 
• Material Trade & Exchange: Chapters trace how woodblocks, printing equipment, and templates were shared, sold, inherited, and transferred across different workshops and borders. 
• Evolution of Design Styles: The texts track the shift from late medieval Gothic ornamentation to Renaissance naturalism, Baroque complexity, and neoclassical book ornamentation. 
• Cultural Representation: Contributors look at how specific images, religious icons, coats of arms, and frontispieces shaped the cultural, political, and religious messaging of Iberian literature.