Latin Vowels Coasters

Two of each coaster in full set; 16 total, boxed 5" uncoated heavy card stock

Expliqué & attribution on recto of all coasters; the letterforms’ evolution is included in the full set of Latin vowels.

Individual letterform sets also have the expliqué of their letterform enclosed.

A E I O U & Y are available as individual boxed sets.

n.b., V = U
These letters were interchangeable for centuries. U and V were
allographs, a variation of a letter in another context. (Uppercase
and lowercase letters are allographs.) Before the use of the letter U,
the shape V stood for both the vowel U and the consonant V.

The letters begin to look different around 1386, in Gothic alphabets,
but the use of the U was not widespread. When scribes did use a U,
it was in the middle of words, e.g. save was saue, but upon was vpon.
It wasn’t until Italian printers standardized letter shapes in the 1600s
that the letter U became regularly used. In 1629, the capital U became
an accepted letter when Lazare Zetzner, a humanist printer in Strasbourg
started using it in his print shop. Dictionary.com

Simple drawings of objects or things were the basis of the first alphabet.
As letterforms became more abstract, learning the fixed order of the alphabet
was easier when the letters evoked familiar objects. These letterforms,
designed by Erhard Ratdolt in c.1475 in Venice, were memory aids. The more
unforgettable the image was, the more likely you were to remember what 
you identified with it. 

The first image of the the letter “V”, on the left, is from
Publicio, Jacopo (1508–68)
Dialogo di m. Lodouico dolce: nel quale si ragiona del modo di accrescere,
et consueruar la memoria. Woodcuts by Erhart Ratdolt. Printed in Venice
in 1575 by Marchiò Sessa.
IC 5d6876 562d 1575 University of Pennsylvania 

The second “V” coaster, to its right, and all other letterforms, except for the
ampersand and “Y” that I designed, are from the edition printed by Ratdolt in 1585.
In this edition, the images are much larger.
Publicio, Jacopo
Artes orandi, epistoandi, memorandi Venice 1585
Rare Inc P 1001 Allen 641 The Library Company Philadelphia

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484.988.0722