Letterpress album produced for the European Jubilee of the Invention of Printing. History of the invention of printing through monuments.
Paris, De l’imprimerie rue de Verneuil, 1840.
Small folio (345 x 265 mm), bradel blue percaline, gilt title and date on front cover, yellow paper endpapers illustrated in xylography; binding spotted, foxing and tarnishing (Publisher’s binding).
Charming typographic album created for the European jubilee of the invention of printing.
Each page features a typographic creation with a special layout. The names of the engravers, type founders, layout artists and printers are indicated on each page: “type engraved by Lombardat and cast by Mesnager”; “type from the Fonderie Générale Tarbé” or “Didot strikes”; “composed and adjusted by E. Dotte” or “by P. Guillard” or “mechanical presses, Compoint, conductor”.
This album is a calling card for the key players in Parisian typography at the time. The dedication page features a “Première épreuve d'un nouveau genre de caractères d'écriture” (First proof of a new typeface), which consists of a composition that appears calligraphic, but is composed using movable type. Dated 1840, it was printed by the Compoint driver.
The album also includes a chromolithographed portrait of Gutenberg, a specimen preface to La Fontaine's Vie d'Ésope illustrated by Granville, a presentation of the material elements of printing before Gutenberg, and an extract from Gabriel Naudé's Addition à l'Histoire de Louis XI, a reproduction of printing incunabula using typographical facsimiles (fragment of Donat, typefaces from the first and second Mainz Bibles, and typefaces from letters of indulgence), and a project for a statue of Gutenberg.
An appendix explains how printing was invented, with transcriptions of letters supposedly written by Gutenberg from the banks of the Rhine.
The album closes with a recto-verso sheet of scratched proofs of the elements illustrating the work.
A final amusing detail: the endpapers are on yellow Chinese paper, with a xylographic impression apparently relating to the creation of Indian ink.
800€
In stock
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