Death and the Press

While writing about the Danse macabre in a recent post I remembered this, the oldest known illustration of mechanical printing.  It’s from a chapbook version of the Danse macabre printed in Lyons in 1499, at the very end of the incunabula period.

By this time printing has spread across Europe and the structure of the wooden press and the workflow of the printing house are well established.  On the left of the woodcut sits the compositor, filling his tray with letters from the case.  Beside him, resting on the bench, is the forme which holds the type tightly together during printing; this one looks like it holds two pages, making a folio-sized book.  The page sticking up is the copy that he works from.

In the middle are the two pressmen, one waving an ink ball.  These were made of treated, stuffed leather and the inker worked with one in each hand to spread the special, greasy ink on the assembled type.  The third man would have operated the press itself, pulling on the wooden bar to lower the heavy platen, squeezing the paper onto the inked forme.  The detail here is very good—the large wooden screw in the top of the press is clear and the press stone, which holds the forme and slides in and out for easy access, is visible.  The press is also accurately shown as being stabilized via beams attached to the ceiling.  The image on the right is a stationer’s shop, which were sometime attached to printing houses.

On a side note, one has to feel for the poor inker: with his colleagues dead and work at a standstill he’s loosing a day’s wages.  No wonder he’s yelling.

Of course, printing hadn’t been invented when the Danse macabre became popular in the late fourteenth century.  The inclusion of new technology into an old illustrative tradition shows that book designers were innovative even when copying older manuscript forms.  And I imagine that it was a fun bit of self-referential black humor to the printers, known for being a bawdy, jovial lot.

This wasn’t the last time death would appear allegorically in the printing house.  The illustration below is from a Danse macabre published at Lyons in 1568, nearly seventy years later, though the date of the woodcut itself is uncertain as they were often reused.  It’s a copy of the 1499 image, and though this artist was less talented, he seems to have been as familiar with the print shop as was his predecessor.  He has included details that are unclear or not visible in the older woodcut, such as the second ink ball, the platen, and the forme on the press stone; and he’s made the halfway finished forme next to the compositor four-pages (quarto-sized) rather than copying the two-page forme above.

Just a note:  The 1499 woodcut is very well-known, but I discovered the second through a short article titled ‘An Early Picture of a Printing Press’ by William M. Ivins in the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 19, 1924.

Irony

The world’s largest collection of sixteenth-century anatomical prints, or ‘fugitive sheets’ has been digitized and is available online, thanks to the Wellcome Library.  There are nineteen prints with pop-up action allowing the reader to see different organ systems in the order of dissection.  In this male and female set you can see both still images and video of the flaps being lifted—brilliant!  (I do wish that more of the entries offered stills, since the video is cool but it’s hard to get a detailed view of the different layers.)

I’m in the process of looking through all these, but I’m especially intrigued by this one.  Can you guess who’s making an unauthorized celebrity cameo?  It’s Vesalius’s head on that body, copied from his full-page portrait in the Fabrica.  Right next to an organ (on the right) taken from the same book.  Vesalius spent a great deal of energy, even prior to publication, in trying to forestall the plagiarism of his work.  I doubt, though, that even he imagined his own head would end up on a perpetually-being-dissected body.  One has to wonder about the motives of the artist—an ironic joke at the great dissector’s expense?

Here’s the original portrait for comparison:

The Golden Compasses

Last weekend I finally did some traveling, heading to Antwerp for a couple of days to see the Plantin-Moretus Museum.  On the whole, information about specific early modern printers is rare and usually gleaned from the texts they published.  In the case of the Plantin-Moretus dynasty, however, a wealth of material has been preserved in close to its original context.  Founder Christoffel Plantin, originally a bookbinder, opened a printing firm in Antwerp the 1550s.  He was a clever businessman, printing material for a range of groups including humanists, scientists, Catholics, and Protestants, and his success allowed him to expand rapidly.  In 1575 he moved the press to a new headquarters which makes up part of the museum.

Plantin was succeeded by his son-in-law, Jan Moretus I—it was common at the time for senior employees to marry into printing families with the expectation that they would inherit—and the business remained within the family until the late nineteenth century, when it was sold to the city of Antwerp.  Because of unbroken family control, and the fact that the firm remained at the same headquarters for hundreds of years, a great deal of its history is preserved, including the layout of rooms, artifacts, decor, presses, type, casting equipment, engravings, finished books, and the extensive company archives.  The museum even holds the two oldest printing presses in existence, in addition to a number of canvasses by Reubens, who was apprently a friend of the family (too bad he’s one of my least-favorite artists).  There is no other place like it in the world, and it’s a fantastic experience for anyone interested in book history.

I traveled with my friend Megan (who just happens to be another book historian living in the same hall) on the Eurostar, which I’m happy to report was one of the nicest transportation experiences of my life.  I did get patted down at security, but overall it was easy, quick, and much more pleasant than flying.  The Eurostar tickets covered our transfer to local rail at Brussels, and it was about an hour from there to Antwerp Central Station.

Our first stop in Antwerp was for a late lunch of frites, and it’s now difficult for me to entertain the thought of eating lesser fries than those in the paper boxes we carried down the main thoroughfare toward the museum.  The Plantin-Moretus publishing house is completely engrossing—far larger and more rambling than we had expected.  It’s hard to say what I enjoyed the most.  The press room was fantastic, and it was a joy to see the workshop filled with antique typecasting materials.  But it’s the experience of visiting a completely preserved publishing firm, and getting a sense of its day-to-day operation and the lives of the people who ran it, that is really special.

After the museum we wandered around the city for a while, had dinner, and drank Belgian beer at a bar filled with tourists and tacky religious icons.  The next day we explored the art and fashion museums and more of the city.  Oh, and lunch was waffles.  Which, for me, meant waffles with ice cream, chocolate sauce, and cream.  Overall a fantastic trip, and I felt that even in such a short time it was possible to get a good sense of the city.  I would definitely recommend it for anyone traveling in Europe, and I’d love to go back again during the summer months.  You can see my pictures of the museum, with explanations, here, and the set for the rest of Antwerp is here.  There is a brief history of the Plantin-Moretus firm at the museum’s website.

The Old Corner Bookstore

I was recently introduced to the awesome Shorpy: The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog.  This morning’s image is “The Old Corner Bookstore, 1900.”  Check out those cool guys just loitering by the post!  I love their juxtaposition against the people moving quickly down the sidewalk.  My secret desire is to be a man and dress in high collars and newsboy caps everyday.

And looking through the Shorpy archives I found an older post, even more appropriate for this week.

I Will Shrink You!

Links

Tons of links this week!

— So, the Olympic opening ceremony!  The very beautiful first half of the show featured ancient Chinese paper and printing technology, including a giant LED scroll, human calligraphy, a troop of dancers dressed as Confucian disciples carrying bamboo scrolls, and a truly amazing homage to movable type.   (I certainly never thought that I would hear an NBC announcer talking about “movable printing.”)  Unfortunately I, and it seems no one else, can find any video online.  So check out this BBC page for photos (they captured more of the book history stuff than NBC or CNN).  If you want to take a shot with video here’s the Wired guide to watching the Olympics online.

— Hoefler & Frere-Jones point out the intensely beautiful work of typographer and graphic designer Janno Hahn.  Do check out the gallery on Hahn’s website.  I will probably make some desktops for my computer from these images.

— Acephalous discusses the 1934 obscenity case that was decided in favour of Ulysses.

— PhiloBiblos and Upward Departure report on the sentencing of Richard Delaney, an electrician who stole £89,000 worth of rare materials from the Birmingham University Library.  Apparently the guy claimed he was going to read and then return them?!  Terrible.

— Morbid Anatomy shares some wonderfully creepy images from The Dances of Death Through the Various Stages by Hans Holbein the Younger reproduced as copperplate engravings by Dabid Deuchar in 1803.

— Satirical maps of World War I at BibliOdyssey.

Bookride continues a great series called “Where Do You Get These Books?”  This week’s installment is on the perils and pleasures of Book Towns.

— Book Patrol farewells skilled marbler Ann Muir.

— The Exile Bibliophile gets the prize for discovering the best toy ever.  If only I had several hundred extra dollars lying around.

— Hoefler & Frere-Jones also point us to an awesome pencil collection website.  I have to stop looking before I drool on the keyboard.

— The New York Times presents a sideshow titled “Book Ads: The Golden Age, 1962-1973.  Via Quillblog.

African American Pamphlets & WWI Postcards

Today I want to point out two nice digital collections at Emory University.

When most of us think of pamphlets the first things that come to mind are the broadsides and revolutionary tracts of the early modern era followed by the religious and social works of the 19th century.  The Emory University Portal for African American Pamphlets, however, sheds light on what I would consider to be an often overlooked but significant aspect of American printing history.  You can look through notable examples beginning on the home page, many of which have striking covers, or browse based on author, illustrator or publisher.  It would be nice if Emory made available more background information and full scans of these tracts (at least for the notable examples,) but I did enjoy just looking through the cover images.  The site also provides, at the bottom of the ‘About‘ section, a list of important pamphlet collections at other institutions.

The second site is The Great War, which features a nice collection of WWI era postcards and poetry.  I’m not much into poetry so I haven’t delved into that section, but the postcards are wonderful and can be browsed via a range of subjects like nationality, image type and content (there are even some WWII era cards in the mix.)  I was particularly taken with the embroidered cards—do give them a look.  A bit disappointed, though, that the ANZACs have been mostly left out.

If you happen to be in Madison, WI

The UW-Madison Department of Special Collections has created what looks like a fascinating exhibit on the use of color in scientific books between the 15th and 20th centuries.  It’s in conjunction with the 2008 Culture of Print in Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine conference taking place in September, but the exhibit will be open all summer.  It focuses on changing color technologies and how the use of color was approached from a scientific perspective, drawing from the library’s extensive science and natural history collection.   For more information visit the Special Collections website.

Getting It Really, Really Wrong

The Discovery Channel is reporting today on a new study of high mercury levels in medieval monks, believed to be caused by exposure to the ink used in creating manuscripts (among other possibilities).  It seems interesting, but unfortunately both the Discovery Channel and the scientists who preformed the research err quite seriously in referring to the books as incunabula.  One has to wonder what else the archaeologists got wrong about medieval book production.

Since the monks, who were buried in the cloister walk of the Cistercian Abbey at Øm, did not have these diseases [syphilis and leprosy] but contained mercury in their bones, scientists believe the monks were either contaminated while preparing and administering medicines, or while writing the artistic letters of incunabula, or pre-1500 A.D. books.

And again:

Even today “one should really not touch, or much less rub, the parchment pages of an incunabulum,” Lund Rasmussen said, adding that mercury “was used in the first place because cinnabar (a type of mercury) has this bright red, beautiful color.”

And this is the worst bit.

By 1536, books were no longer written by hand, but were instead printed, so the scientists suspect the toxic red ink literally faded from the monastic picture.

Where did they get this random date of 1536?  Printing had already spread across the Continent by 1500, even if some books continued to be produced by hand.

And of course there’s no email address or comment section.  Argh.

*edit* I found a comment submission page and wrote a note explaining what incunabula means.  I’m sure it will never be read.

Dante

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get to Dante, but I finally read the Inferno this weekend.  I guess it never seemed like something I could get into, not being very religious, but I ended up loving it.  I found a copy in the library with really good commentary, and at some point in the near future I hope to find the last two volumes by the same translators.  In the meantime, some really good Dante links.

— MS Holkham misc. 48 is a late 14th century illuminated manuscript of the Inferno at the Bodleian Library.

— One my favorite sites is Renaissance Dante in Print: 1472-1629.  This online exhibit from Notre Dame exhaustively covers the early printing history of the Divine Comedy, with image links at the bottom of each page.  I particularly liked the section on Dantean cosmography, which compiles the different graphical representations of Dante’s Hell.

— The National Gallery of Victoria displays 36 of William Blake’s watercolor illustrations for the Divine Comedy, created during the last years of his life, between 1824 and 1827. The images are small, but clear.

— The William Blake Archive, UNC Chapel Hill, has an even larger digital collection, including 102 images for the Divine Comedy.  The only problems are that the image viewer is a bit buggy, at least in Firefox, and when you enlarge an image it blurs and the sides get cut off.

— Digital Dante, from Columbia University, includes a collection of small images by Gustave Doré, Sandro Botticelli and Salvador Dali.

— The World of Dante, created by the University of Virginia, is a great resource and has a lovely gallery that includes images from Yates Thompson 36, a strikingly beautiful 15th century illuminated manuscript held by the British Library.  The gallery also displays Dantean art by Botticelli, Doré, Alessandro Vellutello and John Flaxman.

• Carnal Sinners – Yates Thompson 36, British Library.