Ars moriendi - ("The Art of Dying") is the name of two related Latin texts dating from about 1415-1450 which offer advice on the protocols and procedures of a good death and on how to "die well", according to the Christian Church of the late Middle Ages. It was basically Church propaganda used to scare you into giving them money.
Block book - before the invention of moveable type, some books were printed in Europe from engraved wooden blocks, with one block for each page. This method was developed by the 9th cent. A.D. in China. The practice has a richer history in the East than in the West since the number of characters used in Chinese writing made printing from movable type exceedingly difficult. The best-known block book is the Biblia pauperum [poor man's Bible].
Broadsheet is when both sides of a broadside are printed on.
A colophon, in publishing, is a brief description usually located at the end of a book, describing production notes relevant to the edition. In most cases it is a description of the text typography, often entitled A note about the type. This will identify the names of the primary typefaces used, provide a brief description of the type's history, and a brief statement about its most identifiable physical characteristics.
Copperplate engraving - an engraving consisting of a smooth plate of copper that has been etched or engraved. Engraving as a printmaking method was developed during the 15th Century when metal plates began to replace the use of carved wooden printing blocks for the reproduction of works of art.
Ex libris - Preceded by handwritten inscriptions, sonnets often with a notice content, ex-libris (leaflets or book labels) were born parallely to the increase of books circulation due to the invention of printing. Their aim was to give to the property of the volume much honour and possibility of distinction in order to make the theft more difficult.
Probably inspired by the so-called “signs of shop” they were born in Germany not only because in that place was originated the printing but especially because, there, the xylography developed extraordinarily. Ex-libris changed under the influence of schools and governments, expressing the tendences, the literary and the artistic taste of different generations.
The most ancient well-known ex-libris belonged to Hans Jgler, chaplain of the Bavarian family Von Shoenstett, whose name is findable in the gothic characters contained in the cartouche, under it there is a sprig with an hedgehog. This specimen, dated 1470-80, already presents the characteristics of modern ex-libris, rectangular framed format, a central figure in a logical and/or semantic relation to the owner, whose name as written in a caurtoche.
In 1500, the ex-libris assumes the characteristics of a coat of arms with the symbols of the different noble families who, in this period, were the greater owner of libraries. Over the centuries, the leaflet enlarges its sizes and makes its figure more complete and refined. The decoration, rich in the Baroque Age, becomes more essential and simple in 1700, at the same time as the diffusion of Neoclassicism, from which it gets its inspiration in the insertion of the owner name in gravestones or monuments inspired by Classic art.
So over the times the nineteenth-century middle class, not owning noble elements that could be represented on its own leaflets, often resorts to the landscape of the romantic art.
Then, ex-libris know a both qualitative and quantitative development at the end of XIX th century, at the coming and diffusion of Art nouveau.
Right from this time also collecting develops on an international scale with the origin of associations, oriented to increase the exchanges and to stimulate the production of ex-libris. So they commissioned more and more as an autonomous work of art, indipendent from its principal use.
Exemplar - A copy of a book or text.
Incunabula - It’s a latin word, and it means “cradle” or “baby linen”. Its connotations of birth and beginnings caused seventeenth-century writers to adopt it as a name for books printed from Gutenberg’s invention of typography until the end of the fithteenth century.An incunabulum is a book, single sheet, or image that was printed — not handwritten— before the year 1051 in Europehese are very rare and valuable items. The origin of the word is the Latin incunabula for "swaddling clothes", used by extension for the infancy or early stages of something. The first recorded use of incunabula as a printing term is in a pamphlet by Bernhard von Mallinckrodt, De ortu et progressu artis typographicae ("Of the rise and progress of the typographic art"), (Cologne , 1639), which includes the phrase prima typographicae incunabula, "the first infancy of printing", a term to which he arbitrarily set an end, 1500, which still obtains. The term came to denote the printed books themselves from the late seventeenth century. The plural is incunabula and the word is sometimes Anglicized to incunable. A former term is fifteener, referring to the fifteenth century.
There are two types of incunabula: the block-book (sometimes called xylographic), made from a single carved or sculpted block for each page and the typographic , made with movable type on a printing press in the style of Johann Gutenberg. Many authors reserve the term incunabulum for the typographic ones only.
The end date for identifying a book as an incunabulum is convenient, but was chosen arbitrarily. It does not reflect any notable developments in the printing process around the year 1500. Incunabula usually refers to the earliest printed books, completed at a time when some books were still being hand-copied.
The gradual spread of printing ensured that there was great variety in the texts chosen for printing and the styles in which they appeared. Many early typefaces were modelled on local forms of writing or derived from the various European forms of Gothic script, but there were also some derived from documentary scripts (such as most of Caxton's types), and, particularly in Italy, types modelled on humanistic hands. These humanistic typefaces are often used today, barely modified, in digital form.
Printers tended to congregate in urban centres where there were scholars, ecclesiastics, lawyers, nobles and professionals who formed their major customer-base. Standard works in Latin inherited from the medieval tradition formed the bulk of the earliest printing, but as books became cheaper, works in the various vernaculars (or translations of standard works) began to appear.
Famous incunabula include the Gutenberg Bible of 1455, the Peregrinatio in terram sanctam of 1485, printed and illustrated by Erhard Reuwich, both from Mainz, and the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel, printed by Anton Koberger in 1493. Other well-known incunabula printers were Albrecht Pfister of Bamberg, Günther Zainer of Augsburg, Johann Mentelin of Strasbourg and William Caxton of Bruges and London.
The tally of editions and titles issued before 1500 runs into the thousands. Studies of incunabula began in the seventeenth century. M. Maittaire (1667-1747) and G.W. Panzer (1729-1805) arranged printed material chronologically in annals format, and in the first half of the nineteenth century, L. Hain published, Repertorium bibliographicum — a checklist of incunabula arranged alphabetically by author: "Hain numbers" are still a reference point. Hain was expanded in subsequent editions, by W. Copinger and D. Reichling, but it is being superceeded by the authoritative modern listing, a German catalogue, the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, which has been under way since 1925 and is still being compiled at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. The British Library has compiled the Incunabula Short-Title Catalogue which includes the holdings of most libraries world-wide.
Letter of indulgence - With a letter of indulgence the pope pronounced to the believer the remission of sins in the hereafter. From the selling of these letters the church drew a high income. After the invention of the printing press, indulgence letters were printed in large numbers.
Punch, Matrix and Mold - used in Gutenberg's system for casting type. A steel punch is used to cast an impression into a softer brass matrix. After the matrix is slipped into the bottom of the two-part mold, the mold is filled with the molten lead alloy to cast a piece of type. After the alloy cools, the type mold is opened and the type is removed.
Reformation - Martin Luther's presence at the university in Wittenborg influenced the graphics produced. Lucas Cranach, often put considerable energy towards the Reformation of the Church by portraying Reformers and their cause in books and broadsides. Cranach made many portraits as propaganda for the Reformation as well as for the Church.
Woodcut - a type of relief print, is the earliest printmaking technique, and the only one traditionally used in the Far East. It was probably first developed as a means of printing patterns on cloth, and by the 5th century was used in China for printing text and images on paper. Woodcuts of images on paper developed around 1400 in Europe, and slightly later in Japan. These are the two areas where woodcut has been most extensively used purely as a process for making images without text.
The artist draws a sketch either on a plank of wood, or on paper which is transferred to the wood. Traditionally the artist then handed the work to a specialist cutter, who then uses sharp tools to carve away the parts of the block that he/she does not want to receive the ink. The raised parts of the block are inked with a brayer, then a sheet of paper, perhaps slightly damp, is placed over the block. The block is then rubbed with a baren or spoon, or is run through a press. If in color, separate blocks are used for each color.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
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