The Printed Book: Its History, Illustration and Adornment: From the Days of Gutenberg to the Present TimeBouchot, Henri
History
The Printed Book: Its History, Illustration and Adornment: From the Days of Gutenberg to the Present Time
Bouchot, Henri
Bookbinding -- History; Books; Books -- History; Illustration of books; Printing -- History
The Revolution passed over some among those that it ruined, and, as
stated above, they followed the movement, and lost themselves in the
school of David. It was Duplessis-Bertaux who, after having furnished to
Cazin, the publisher, vignettes for his _Recueil des Meilleurs Contes
en Vers_, 1778, and many other books, after having worked for Didot,
devoted himself to patriotic engraving and to the reproduction of scenes
of the Revolution. When he published his _Tableaux Historiques_, in
three volumes folio, adorned with nearly two hundred large plates, it
was under the Consulate, that is to say far from the time when the work
was begun. Renouvier assures us, with his exclusive disdain for the
eighteenth century, that Duplessis-Bertaux was a mystifier, and that his
scenes of the Revolution were a hoax, "in the kind of spirit in vogue
under the Directory." The truth is that the artist, in place of being a
cheerful Callot, as might be thought from his manner of engraving, so
like that of the Lorraine artist, was imbued with the emphatic and
exaggerated impressions of the first Republic, its _sans-culottes_ in
the poses of the Sabines and its _tricoteuses_ apeing Penelope.
The immense artistic advance made in France in the eighteenth century in
the manufacture and illustration of the Book made itself felt throughout
Europe. In Germany, Chodowiecki, born at Dantzic of a family of
apothecaries, developed his talent from ornamenting the boxes of his
father, and from 1758 to 1794 he designed numerous plates for books and
almanacs, a little heavy in engraving, but singularly clever in
composition. There were a few others also designing, and Kilian,
Folkema, and Ridinger produced some fine engravings, but the Book did
not make so much progress in Germany as in France and England.
In England a vast improvement was manifested. Fine types were cast by
Baskerville and Caslon; printing machines were perfected. The
illustration of books by engraved plates was in the first half of the
century almost entirely done by foreigners, but an English school was
arising, which attained perfection in the latter half of the eighteenth
and first half of the nineteenth century. Wood engraving also, which,
with the exception of blocks for head and tailpieces, had become almost
a lost art, was revived by Bewick, to become later one of the chief
adornments of the Book.
Before 1716 English printers obtained their best founts of type from
Holland, but the establishment of the Caslon foundry rendered them
independent. William Caslon, the first great English type-founder, was
born 1692, and died 1766. The foundry still exists, pre-eminent in the
beauty of its characters. Baskerville established a foundry about 1750,
and printed at Birmingham with his own types a number of extremely
beautiful books. The impetus given to fine printing by these two men
rapidly spread itself, and laid the foundation of the perfection which
English book-making reached.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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