The bindery of Laurens Janszoon Koster.
Engraving by Jan van de Velde after a design by Pieter Janszoon Saenredam, in Petrus Scriverius' Laure-crans voor Laurens Coster van Haerlem, Eerste Vinder vande Boeck-druckery (1628).
Although the evidence is somewhat scant, Dutch legend would have it that Laurens Janszoon Koster from Haarlem invented moveable type while walking in a park with his grandchildren. The idea occurred to him when he was cutting letters out of birch leaves. If it is believed, his first printing efforts in 1440 predate Gutenberg's printing press by 12 years. Or so the story goes. All that is known about the tale appears at the Psymon Web Bindery (cache) which has a nice interface and a collection of woodcut and art images and a history of printing.
Monday, September 19, 2005
Gutenberg Challenge
Blue Devils
George Cruickshank was a humorist of the school of Hogarth and considered by some to be the best England has produced. He began as a painter of theatre backdrops, moved onto political caricatures and finally found his niche in the 1820s as a book illustrator. Perhaps his most famous work accompanied some editions of Charles Dickens novels.
This illustration appears as part of the small
Update June 2008:
Update Two: Upon enquiry, I was advised that the library website has been updated and the exhibition site: 'The Language of the Age: Depictions of Medicine in Graphic Satire' is still available!
The Green Girl
The Green Girl, by Jack Williamson (Avon Publishing) 1930.A Horse is a Horse of Course
I do admire the Victorian age's sense of pedantry when it came to publication titles but I couldn't help but laugh at this one. A flitch of pony brisket anyone?
There's a quote in there --- "In studying animal nature, we find a general law that the larger and more active the brain, the more intelligence and docility is exhibited; and the smaller and more sluggish the brain, the less intelligence is possessed, and the more determined and active the resistance to control." --- in which 'animal' could be substitued with 'internet discussion board participant', in some cases.
These images were jagged from the Making of America books series of some 9,500 19th century books (>3 million pages) that have been digitized and made available by the University of Michigan and Cornell University. It's of course a commendable effort but once you start viewing book pages, there's an unnecessary and annoying 1/2 page loss of viewing area with the header frame.
Cries, Itinerants and Services
Marcellus Laroon’s The Cryes of the City of London drawne after the life were originally published in 1687. They are a kind of advertising leaflet. The image on the left is one of 2 original title pages of The Cryes. There are quite a few from the series on display in the Cries, Itinerants and Services section among the John Jonhson exhibition at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University. The exhibition features trade ephemera - A Nation of Shopkeepers - issued between 1654 and 1860.
The image on the right (c. 1637) shows 'singing glasses', a type of glass horn or trumpet in whose mouthpiece was a music (or noise) making reed. It is thought that (the now defunct) novelty glass items were either exempt or ignored by the then trade controls exerted by the Company of Glass-Sellers. [Thanks Bibi - via]
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Harmonia Macrocosmica
German-Dutch latin school rector Andreas Cellarius is renowned in celestial cartography for his 1660 Harmonia Macrocosmica. It is an atlas of the celestial world systems of Copernicus, Brahe, Ptolemy and Aratus, supplemented with numerous other cosmolographical starmaps and plates. All told, there are 30 double folio colour plates (inventory of copies) and together with an accompanying latin text, the University of Utah has a complete facsimile of the 1661 edition.
Other online versions:
