Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Fifteenth-Century Book: The Scribes, the Printers, the Decorators

The Fifteenth-Century Book: The Scribes, the Printers, the Decorators

Bühler, Curt F.

Hardcover

Series: Anniversary Collection

Medieval & Renaissance HistoryBusiness of WritingGeneral Reference

ISBN10: 1512800961
ISBN13: 9781512800968
Publisher: Univ Penn Pr Anniversary Colle
Published: Jan 29 1960
Pages: 200
Weight: 1.02
Height: 0.50 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

The fifteenth century, one of the most curious and confused periods in recorded history, witnessed amazing developments in the printing industry and in the production of books. The present volume surveys the history of the manufacture of books throughout the fifteenth century, whether written by hand or produced by the press, and points out that both methods faced very similar problems and found almost identical solutions for them.

Actually, the fifteenth century itself saw no material difference between manuscripts and incunabula (fifteenth-century printings), and regarded the latter simply as codices produced by a new method of artificial writing. Curt F. Bühler discusses the impact of the epoch-making invention on the scribes as well as the attitudes that the contemporary book-lovers adopted toward the products of the press.

The author also studies the types of men who were attracted to the new industry and the nature of the books that they believed to be readily vendible. In addition, certain familiar beliefs regarding the history of the early presses are challenged, and possible solutions are presented for the problems are still imperfectly understood.

To illustrate the text, beautiful reproductions of illuminated manuscript pages, printed pages, colophons, woodcut illustration, and early typefaces have been included. The author's discussion of the decoration in books is not so much a study in the fine arts but, rather, an analysis of the types of volumes which lent themselves to decoration, and the various forms of such work.

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