The use of prints to illustrate books was one branch of a wide-ranging business in the production of printed pictures. Away from the context of books, prints are usually thought of as decorative objects, but in the eighteenth century many were made for practical use. Throughout the long eighteenth century, specialists in printed pictures controlled their trade. Booksellers never dominated the business of printed pictures, although their interests frequently overlapped with those of printsellers. Booksellers occasionally published prints and London booksellers frequently helped with the distribution of prints, especially with expensive sets where a wide sale was needed to recover costs. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, most fine prints and books of prints were imported from abroad, chiefly from France and Italy. Large numbers of imported prints were advertised in the newspapers after the cessation of hostilities with France around 1711, and huge quantities of foreign prints continued to flood the British market for many years.