Browse Items (420 total)

Elizabeth Flesher was the widow of printer James Flesher (? - 1670), himself son of printer Miles Flesher. The Fleshers, father and son, were most renowned for their printing of Arabic texts, so it would be quite appropriate for this text containing…

Printed in Merseburg (Germany) in 1753 by Christian Ludwig Forberger, this work displays an outstanding and perhaps mindboggling combination of font sizes and styles, as well as a mixture of red and black lettering, on one title page. (With no proof…

Sebastian Gryphius (1492-1556) was a German printer (born Greif, in Reutlingen), although he would establish himself in Lyon, France for the bulk of his career. Chiefly printing the works of classical Latin authors, Gyphius published the works of…

Elsevier, perhaps the most well-known name in electronic publishing today, takes it name from the much earlier and, perhaps, comparably successful Dutch printing house. It is renowned for its meticulous printing and a series of duodecimal format…

This work displays the printer’s device of Simon de Colines. De Colines (ca. 1475-1546) was active in Paris from about 1520 until his death in 1546. De Colines had actually collaborated with printer Henri Estienne (1528-1598), continuing printing…

Aldus Manutius (1449-1515), active in Venice, was an Italian printer, credited for the invention of Italic type, as well as “pocket” format books (chiefly the octavo, which was easily portable, in contrast to the very large formats popular at the…

This example shows the “mottled” style of marbling, attempting to reproduce the effect of natural stone, here in a spectacular combination of blue tones. The edges have been gilded and are in remarkable shape.

The page on display, the reverse side of an engraved portrait of the author, Andrew Marvell, offers a wonderfully clear and visible example of the watermark embedded into the paper. Watermarks were designs woven into the mould used by papermakers to…

This is an example of paste paper, most specifically one generated with the “pull “(i.e. “pull-paper”) technique. A mixture of glue and colour pigments are applied with a brush to two sheets of paper that are imposed upon each other. Before the glue…

Here we have yet another example of hand printblock paper. However, in contrast to the previous example, this is a relatively recent paper, a product of a highly mechanized process. We can see the regularity of the design and the uniformity of the…