Illustrated books -- Bibliography; Illustration of books; Printing -- History
From the starting-point of the book of which the printer printed nothing
but the text the collector can advance in many different directions.
There was no regular and unbroken progress in the development of the
modern form of book, nor does it matter greatly that the examples of any
particular improvement should be either absolutely or nearly the
earliest. The main thing is that they should be good illustrations of
the special feature for which they are acquired. The problem how to
dispense with the aid of a rubricator had to be faced by countless
printers in many different towns, for rubricating by hand must have
added very considerably to the cost of a book. The obvious thing to do
was to print in red all the headings, chapter-numbers, etc., which the
rubricator used to add in that colour. But this was both expensive and
troublesome, as it involved two printings and the placing of the paper
in exactly the same position in the press in each. Caxton and one or two
other early printers tried to avoid this double printing and difficulty
of registration by putting on both red and black ink at the same
time--very probably, where they came close together, they were rubbed on
with a finger--but this so often resulted in smudges and lines half of
one colour, half of another, that it was soon abandoned. Double printing
was mostly soon abandoned also, except by the most expert men. It was
tried and abandoned by the printer of the Forty-two Line Bible, though
subsequently Fust and Schoeffer completely mastered it. Between 1472 and
1474 it was tried and abandoned by almost every printer in Strassburg.
The difficulty was generally[28] overcome by substituting, for red ink
used with type of the same size or face as the text, type of a larger
size or heavier face, which could be printed in black ink with the text
and yet stand out sufficiently clearly from it to catch the eye.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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