Initial G The text on this cutting was stenciled rather than written in, a technique that came into use after the invention of printing. Stenciling required less skill on the part of the scribe but retained to some degree the hand-produced feel of a manuscript book. In this case, a scribe has gone over the stenciled letters and inked lines to connect the separate parts of the rounded, stenciled letter... Initial J A scribe has gone over the stenciled letters and inked lines to connect the separate parts of the rounded, stenciled letter forms. This can be seen especially in the letters 's,' 'a' and 'g'. These initials once formed part of the decorative program of a stenciled book, or in other words, a book in which the text (seen in this example on the reverse) was stenciled rather than written in. The decoration, however, was completed by hand. These cuttings can be dated to the 17th or 18th centuries.
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