Was Jacques Le Forestier the printer of the Horae Ad Usum Sarum of 1495?

Abstract

• THE British Library and the Bodleian Library both own a copy of a Book of Hours for Sarum use dated 1495, but without indication of place of printing or printer's name. Two Gothic types are employed for the book, one measuring 113 mm, the other 63 mm for twenty lines, as well as two alphabets of Lombard initials and the traditional illustrations of Books of Hours. Proctor placed this edition among the anonymous incunabula of Paris. Duff, and after him Hoskins, attributed the edition to Philippe Pigouchet, doubtless because certain woodcuts and borders are the same as those in a Paris Book of Hours which this printer completed in 1491. While Victor Scholderer was preparing BMC viii (the volume on French incunabula) he noticed that in 1493 the same woodcuts and borders had been also used in two Books of Hours printed at the expense of Geoffroy de Marnef, attributable to the press of Jean Maurand at Paris. But since he could not identify the larger Gothic type, he decided to catalogue the Sarum Hours as the work of an anonymous Parisian press. He remarked: 'The decorations of the Sarum Hours of 1495 here catalogued connect the edition with Maurand and ultimately with Pigouchet, but the text type cannot be referred to any known press. No other book containing it appears to be known.'