Schönschreibmeister

A Calligraphy Master's Album

'Werke der Schönschreibmeister' by FH Brechtel (1573) is available from Bamberg State Library in Germany.

The 24 page paper manuscript is dominated by Middle German blackletter scripts with extravagant embellishment, and a minority of the pages contain 'less' ornamental writing in Latin.

The manuscript appears to be a compilation of calligraphic examples by one of the originators of early fraktur^ scripts, Johann Neudörffer the Elder, to whom this album is dedicated. The manuscript's title - something like: The Beautiful Works of the Master Scribes - is also suggestive of Brechtel having assembled a set of Neudörffer's calligraphy output, rather than his presenting an adaptation or transformation from the originals. [Later: I'm informed the title is plural, meaning Master Scribes or similar; so we might presume the album script examples come from a variety of sources beyond simply Neudörffer']

Neudörffer was an important educator and he published text books in Nuremberg on writing which dominated teaching curriculums for a couple of centuries; and his calligraphy endeavours were similarly admired. Neudörffer is also honoured as the first biographical historian of German artists, though his 'Nachrichten' (1547) wasn't published until the 1800s. He was lucky enough to have counted Albrecht Dürer as a friend and neighbour!

There is not a lot of information about Franz Joachim Brechtel (that I can find) online. It would appear that his main claim to fame and employment stems from music sheets that he printed. I'm unsure whether he was the composer or simply the designer/publisher of the sheet music. In either case, his name is associated today with more than a hundred pieces of music that I - just - randomly found on the internet (so a role as composer seems more likely, though I didn't dig into it).

• Neudörfer (or Neudörffer), Johannes (i.e., Johann), der Ältere at the Dictionary of Art Historians.
• Brechtel at Musicalis.
• 'Lied und Liederbuch in der Frühen Neuzeit' 2009 by A Classen and L Richter features some biographical commentary on Franz Brechtel - (snippets)
• ADDIT: go see Thony's very interesting post at The Renaissance Mathematicus wherein he expounds greatly on the printing scene in Nuremberg in the 15th/16th centuries.
• Thanks Jeanne!
• Previously (specifically) on BibliOdyssey: Nuremberg Scribe features elaborate scripts produced by Stephan Brechtel - likely a brother of Franz - and there's a link in there to a post on the Brechtel family of calligraphers 
• Previously on BiblOdyssey: the many posts under the tag of calligraphy.
• The Schönschreibmeister post first appeared on the BibliOdyssey website.