Illumination/ Incipit

Ellesmere Chaucer is the most elaborately decorated of all the manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales. In addition, it is also among the largest of the manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales. The height is 15 3/4 inches and its width is 11 1/8 inches.

Decorative Boarders

There is 71 pages of manuscript and a lavish use of three-quarter boarders (demi-vinets). These borders fill the left margin of the page and taper off horizontally into upper and lower margins, leaving the right margin blank. There is a lot of white space on the right margin. The boarders are made up of gold and colored branches that extends vertically. The vertical lines are like tree branches with "trefoil-like leaves" or flowers, such as daisys.

Incipit
The large initials, or the Incipit Page, are in gold and colors. There are a total of 225 incipits in the manuscript, and the size and height of the incipit varies from two to six lines in height. These large initials do not always start at the top of the page. The story might end in the middle of the page, and then the next story might appear in the middle of the page starting with an incipit.  So the incipit is like a page-break. It highlights the beginning of the new tale.

There are light display of paragraph marks, in gold or colors, with red or violet pen marks to make the text look extravagant.

Illuminator

The purpose of the illuminator is to make the pages stand out, to sparkle the pages with gold and color.
The illumination of gold leaf and colors seemed to be placed after an outline was sketched onto the page. There are subtle sketching lines underneath the color, where the outline was sketched.