British Library Journal (volume 9, number 1, spring 1983)

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The use of William Caxton's type 3 by John Lettou and William de Machlinia in the printing of their Yearbook 35 Henry VI, c.1481-1482
(1983-04)
Partridge, W. J.
WILLIAM CAXTON'S Type 3, which was the second type used by him when setting up his business in Westminster in 1476, was a fresh casting of a sharply cut, well-aligned Gothic by Johan Veldener, a typographer then active in the Low Countries. It measures 135 mm over twenty lines. The typeface shows to good effect in Caxton's Boethius of c.1478, and was used as a bold face or headline type in his Cicero printed in 1481, where it was set in line with another Veldener type, a formal batarde Type 2:135B, cast on the same body. When we come to examine the use the two earliest printers in London, John Lettou and William de Machlinia, made of this same typeface a few years after its introduction by Caxton, and of other typefaces from the Caxton repertoire, a number of interesting questions arise.
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Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: acquisitions, German Section
(1983-04)
Paisey, D. L.
Lists of notable acquisitions often concentrate on the expensive and rare: this mixed baker's dozen is, on the whole, no exception. Some of the books listed chronologically here are not only rare but unique, some are of obvious historical or scholarly importance, some are beautiful. All are, I hope, interesting; but it must be said that market value is a red herring and helps to deflect enquiry into the old familiar channels, blocking intellectual adventure and ultimately progress. For every book is a concentrate of historical forces and can illuminate its age and those who produced and consumed it. In a great library, collection-building consists mainly of the patient routine of gap-filling, not of unusual expenditure. It is to be hoped that the bread-and-butter purchases many hundreds of times more numerous will be of just as much intellectual value to the library's present and future public.
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Bagford and Sloane
(1983-04)
Nickson, Margaret
THE way in which over a hundred volumes of John Bagford collections were acquired for the Harleian Library after his death in 1716 is well known to bibliographers. However, the acquisition by Hans Sloane of several other volumes compiled by Bagford, including one which contained the Gutenberg leaf discussed by E. Konig, has not so far been the subject of study, and as the transactions which took place between Sloane and Bagford in the early eighteenth century throw light on the growth of interest in printing history at that time it seems worth while here to tell the story of their relationship in some detail.
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Printing with gold in the fifteenth century
(1983-04)
Carter, Victor
;
Hellinga, Lotte
;
Parker, Tony
Gold printing in the fifteenth century is very rare. There are only two printers who are known to have applied this technique. One of them was Erhard Ratdolt who first used gold for printing a gloriously spectacular full page of dedication in a number of copies of his editio princeps of Euclid. The book was completed a little over 500 years ago, on 25 May 1482. The British Library owns a particularly fine copy on vellum, which was given by the printer to Giovanni Mocenigo, Doge of Venice from 1478 to 1485, to whom he had dedicated the book. It bears the arms of the Doge and his portrait on the page facing the dedication in gold. This copy formed part of the en bloc collection of books which King George III acquired in 1765 from Joseph Smith, the English consul in Venice who is better known to posterity as a collector of art and a dealer in paintings. Smith had brought together a collection of very fine books, especially of first editions printed in Italy which were to become the foundation of the king's library. The exceptional copy of the Euclid had no doubt been found by Smith in Venice. It is now on permanent exhibition in the King's Library. There are other copies recorded which have the dedication page printed in gold: two in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris (one on vellum and one on paper), two in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, one in the University Library in Budapest, and one in the Stadtbibliothek in Augsburg. They have this feature in common: the dedication page in gold is printed in a different typesetting from that used in the other known copies printed in black.
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The Mainz indulgences of 1454/5: a review of recent scholarship
(1983-04)
Ing, Janet
THE earliest extant piece of European printing from movable type with which an absolute date can be associated is a Papal Letter of Indulgence which bears the printed date 1454 and the handwritten purchase date 22 October 1454. Forty-nine other printed copies of this Indulgence are known, some unsold and thus lacking purchase dates; the rest have dates ranging from 25 October 1454 to 30 April 1455. The Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke distinguishes thirteen variants, grouped under two editions: the 30-line Indulgence (GW 6555), hereafter called I 30, and the 31-line Indulgence (GW 6556), hereafter called I 31. Neither form of the Indulgence gives any indication as to printer or place of printing. In the Gesamtkatalog I 30 is assigned to the 'Printer of the 42-line Bible' and I 31 to the 'Printer of the 36-line Bible'; little added information concerning the printer(s) of the Indulgences is provided by the Gesamtkatalog entries for the 42-line Bible (GW 4201), assigned to the 'Printer of the 42-line Bible (Johann Gutenberg)', or the 36-line Bible (GW 4202) assigned to the 'Printer of the 36-line Bible'.
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Recent acquisitions: Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books: manuscript acquisitions 1976
(1983-04)
Recent acquisitions: Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books: manuscript acquisitions 1976.
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A leaf from a Gutenberg Bible illuminated in England
(1983-04)
Kà¶nig, Eberhard
OLD libraries, even those with a great tradition in providing information of a high standard, may sometimes benefit from visitors who insist on not confining themselves to what is listed or catalogued, although the outcome will frequently be - to the annoyance of all concerned - that the search was for something that does not necessarily exist. This situation is all too familiar to those art historians who are experts of illumination and who trace special styles of decoration in manuscripts or printed books; moreover, they do not very often meet librarians who take them to the shelves or are willing to waste days looking for one item which cannot be identified by a precise shelf-mark. But the last time this happened the search was successful: to her own astonishment Lotte Hellinga found in the British Library collection of incunabula a forgotten leaf of a Gutenberg Bible which is not listed in its catalogue, BMC one of the greatest of all catalogues of incunabula. However, the leaf was found in the end, in a guard-book filled with interesting fragments bearing the number Sloane 1044. It was subsequently detached from this volume and press-marked according to the system used for incunabula, and is now known as IC.56a.
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Was Jacques Le Forestier the printer of the Horae Ad Usum Sarum of 1495?
(1983-04)
Baurmeister, Ursula
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.'
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British Library Journal (volume 9, number 1, spring 1983)

British Library Journal (volume 9, number 1, spring 1983)

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