Printers' Marks: A Chapter in the History of TypographyRoberts, W. (William)
History
Printers' Marks: A Chapter in the History of Typography
Roberts, W. (William)
Printers' marks
sources of the scriptural quotations on the white and black triangles.
[Illustration: JULIAN NOTARY.
I N
Iulyan Notary]
The extreme rarity of this printer’s books will be best understood when
it is stated that there are only two examples in the British Museum; one
of these is a “Psalter,” 1504. With W. Faques we exhaust the fifteenth
century printers who employed marks to distinguish the productions of
their presses.
[Illustration: R. FAWKES.
R F
Richard Fakes]
Notwithstanding the similarity in their surnames it is not at all
certain that Richard Fawkes (1509-1530), who also appears as Faukes,
Fakes, and Faques, was related to the last-mentioned printer. His books
are now of excessive rarity. The unicorn (regardant on either side of
the device) appears for the first time in an English mark. Henry Pepwell
(1505-1539), of the Holy Trinity in St. Paul’s Churchyard, was a
bookseller rather than a printer, and all his earlier books were printed
in Paris; his Mark, in which occurs the heraldic device representing the
Trinity, was suggested by the sign of his shop. The most important
example of the thirty books which issued from the little-known press of
Peter Treveris, who was apparently putting forth books from 1514 to
1535, is “The Grete herball whiche geveth parfyt knowlege and
und[er]standing of all maner of herbes,” etc., 1526, a finely printed
folio (“at the signe of the Wodows”), of which a second edition appeared
in 1529. The earlier edition contains, on the recto of the sixth leaf,
a full-page woodcut of the human skeleton, with anatomical explanations,
whilst the last leaf contains a full-page woodcut of the printer’s Mark,
with the imprint at the foot. Herbert supposes that the sign of the
“Wodows,” mentioned by Treveris in the colophon, might possibly be put
for wode hommes or wild men, and alludes to the supporters used in the
device. Treveris printed for several booksellers, notably John Reyves,
of St. Paul’s Churchyard, and for Lawrence Andrewe, of Fleet Street. In
this printer’s Mark, and in fact nearly every other sixteenth century
example, there is a very evident French influence, whilst many of the
examples are the most transparent imitations of Marks used by foreign
printers. Of the three used by John Scott or Skot, who was printing
books from about 1521 to 1537, two were mere copies of the Marks used by
Denis Roce of Paris. We give an illustration of one example; the second
is of the same design, but with a very rich stellated background, and
the motto, “A l’aventure, tout vient a point qui peut attendre.” His own
device was an exceedingly simple long strip, with the letters Iohn Skot
in antique Roman characters. An example of the last mark will be found
in “The Golden Letanye in Englysshe,” printed by Skot in “Fauster Land,
in Saynt Leonardes parysshe”; but examples of this press are excessively
rare, only one, “Thystory of Jacob and his XII Sones,” fourteen leaves,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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