Embellishment has been a function of print production for as long as there has been printing. In fact, it almost goes back to the beginning of the writing of documents. The process of embellishment has also been known as “illumination” and can be traced back to religious texts before the first century. The process, at that time, included adding silver and gold to both text and images to illume the content. While we may not think of color printing as embellishment, color was also used to bring attention and additional value to documents for thousands of years as well. Of course, embellishment and even “printing,” at that point was done by hand using colored dyes and inks in a very tedious process.

Initial page of the Gospel of St. Mark from the Lindisfarne Gospels (c. 700-715 CE), created at the Lindisfarne Priory on the “Holy Island” off the coast of Northumbria, Britain.

Enter technology. Depending on which side of the discussion you sit, printing (or producing multiple copies from a master) was either invented by the Chinese around the 1st century or the Germans in the 14th–15th century. In either case, embellishment was still a fairly manual process. By this point changing or adding color through the use of “multiple impressions” or plates was possible, but the use of gold and silver was still a manual process.