Browse Items (420 total)

Robert Estienne (1503-1559) was the second son of printer Henri Estienne. After his father’s death in 1520, he collaborated with his older brother François and Simon de Colines (whose printer’s device we see in another item on display in this…

The eloquence of Cicero appears to have wildly inspired a number of readers. However, in one case, someone seems less inspired by the art of discourse than infused with a burining desire to go Spear-fiching. If the messy and free-spirited penmanship…

This item shows the printer’s device of Jean Petit (14.. - 1533). Petit was a very prolific printer, and was said to have printed one-tenth of all books printed in Paris from approximately 1493-1530, that is, about 1000 titles. Petit also…

Many hands and many quills have annotated this work by Jerome de Hangest, a theologian hailing from Compiègne and a contemporary of Erasmus. The marginalias annotation, as is the text itself, are in Latin, which would indicate a certain amount of…

William Morris (1834-1896), product of an upper-middle class upbringing of the 19th century, was actually a socialist with a great reverence for the skilled craftsman whose output was a product of labour done by hand, rather than that of…

Who is hiding within the lines of these two portraits in pencil done by an unknown hand? Another caricature is to be found on the verso of the endpaper. While we today might not dream about doodling on the endpapers of an 18th century book, this…

This image depicts the bookplate of Bernard Coleridge, 2nd Baron Coleridge. If the name Coleridge sets off the ringing of bells, it should, as Bernard’s grandfather was the nephew of famed English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).…

The pages that serve to form the inner boards of this work are actually composed of printer’s waste (printed sheets that could not be used by the printer or binder in a final copy). Boards of this nature were created by gluing several sheets of paper…

This image displays yet another example of a register of signatures, with the colophon appearing just be- low. Here we see the beauty and finesse of printed text as realised by Aldus Manutius, The italic font, the spacing of characters and the…

Visible is the printer’s mark of printer and bookseller François l’Honoré (1673?-1748?), originally from the town of Sedan, Alsace. Initially basing himself in Den Haag where he collaborated with Etienne Foulque, he subsequently set up a printing…