Quarto. (56)pp. A variation on the more familiar type specimen book, Maret's Ornamental Designs explores repeating patterns as a lively and colorful means of decorating books, and more abstractly as a bookish sort of expressionism. The earliest specimens establish the book's terms, but the subsequent digressions evoke the geometric innovations of Sol Lewitt while retaining an allegiance to earlier sources of the symbolic possibilities of ornament. These latter examples include luminaries of both literary and design relevance, among them John Ruskin and his wife, Effie Gray, Henry James, D. R. Hay, Charles Dickens, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, William Morris, and Goethe. Bound in quarter orange goatskin with boards covered in handmade Yatsuo paper printed with pinwheel ornaments. Fine. Housed in dropback box.