Video

Speaker(s): Claire Bolton

Related events: New sources for book history – International Conference

Releated Working Group(s):

Collection: CERl conferences

Recorded: November 28, 2017

Abstract:

Claire Bolton (Oxford), Measuring skeletons - discovering the printer In order to understand how the first books were printed in the 15th century, it is important to understand the printers, and how they worked. Printing with moveable type on a hand press was the method invented by Gutenberg, and used by commercial printers for the next 500+ years. Today these skills are in danger of being lost as letterpress printing has declined to a handful of proponents.

This paper will look at how the printer decided on his page layout - his text type face(s), his text width, the number of lines, and the margins of his pages, and how his pages were locked up in the forme. The forme and its position on the press - the printer’s skeleton - should have the same basic shape until every page of the book has been printed. Measurement is the key. The paper will show how all the measurements on the printed page relate to the size of the typeface and how any changes in these measurements can indicate a change of typeface, or printing press.

The printers’ skeleton is another tool that can be helpful to bibliographers in identifying the work of a particular printer and its possible date of printing if not known, along with the individual typefaces used. The British Library catalogue, wonderfully and helpfully, recorded chronologically each printer’s edition with the text area (from the text width and number of lines) text type size, and the size of the leaf. The only printers’ measurement they left out was the inner gutter. This paper will build on this, and show that by understanding a printer’s skeleton, printing historians can follow that printer’s workshop practice and any changes he might make.

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