On the CR (Creative Review) Blog, Patrick has posted an illustrated discussion of the British Library's Macclesfield Alphabet Book, a pattern book "filled with designs for different styles of script, letters, initials and decorative borders."

From the website:

There are 14 different types of decorative alphabets featured, including decorative initials with faces ‘foliate’ alphabets, ie those featuring leaves or other foliage a zoomorphic alphabet, plus, the Library says, large, coloured anthropomorphic initials modelled after fifteenth-century woodcuts or engravings as well as two sets of different types of borders, some of which are fully illuminated in colours and gold.

All are believed to have come from one workshop, where the book would have been used not just in ye olde pitche meetinge but also to teach assistants how to reproduce the house styles.