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 Printing History

GIAMBATTISTA BODONI (1740 – 1813)
Edizioni Valdonega
Verona, Italy
Facsimile of Giambattista Bodoni’s Cimelio
Lithography
1990
Bodoni printed Il Cimelio in 1811. Bodoni’s work is in the Neo-Classical tradition: a picture of order. The typeface used in this book is one the printer designed himself. Notice the letter shapes: narrow, rigid form, with level serifs: all very Neo-Classical qualities.

EARLY BOOKS
Gratiofum Perchacinum
Venice, Italy
Rationale Divinorum Officiorum
by Guilelmo Durando
Letterpress on handmade paper, bound in vellum
1568
The Jaffe Collection’s oldest book is still not old enough to be considered
incunabula—a term reserved for books printed from movable type
before 1501.

ERIC GILL (1882 – 1940)
Hague & Gill
High Wycombe, England
A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Laurence Sterne
Etchings by Denis Tegetmeier
Letterpress, intaglio
1936
Eric Gill was an eccentric British monk who also happened to be one of the 20th Century’s best designers and graphic artists. This book was designed by Gill, as was the typeface, Perpetua.

JOHANNES GUTENBERG (c.1400 – 1468)
Pagent Books
Paterson, New Jersey & New York City
Facsimile of Johannes Gutenberg’s Biblia Sacra
Lithography, gravure
Edition of 1000
1961
Johannes Gutenberg printed his 42-Line Bible around 1450 in Mainz, Germany. Before Gutenberg perfected the process of printing from movable type, books were copied by hand by scribes—a laborious process. If Gutenberg’s book looks like it was written by a scribe, that’s because it was designed to look like the hand-copied books that came before it; letterforms developed further as printing technology spread across Europe. As the new technology spread, the exchange of ideas was forever altered.

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